As a parent, you may not like seeing your baby or child being given an injection.

But vaccination will help protect them against a range of serious and potentially fatal diseases.

There are 3 good reasons to have your child vaccinated:

• vaccinations are quick, safe and extremely effective
• once your child has been vaccinated against a disease, their body can fight it off better
• if a child's not vaccinated, they're at higher risk of catching and becoming very ill from the illness

There will always be some children who are unprotected because:

• they cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons
• they're too young to be vaccinated
• the vaccine does not work (although this is rare)

But if more parents have their children vaccinated, more children in the community will be protected against an illness, such as a measles outbreak

Can you overload a child's immune system?

You may be concerned that too many vaccines at a young age could "overload" your child's immune system, but this really is not the case.

Studies have shown that vaccines do not weaken a child's immune system.

As soon as a baby is born, they come into contact with a huge number of different bacteria and viruses every day, and their immune system copes well.

The bacteria and viruses used in vaccines are weakened or killed, and there are far fewer of them than the natural bugs that babies and children come into contact with.

In fact, if a child was given 11 vaccines all at the same time, it would only use a thousandth of their immune system.

Watch this short animation to find out more

Find out about vaccine safety

Read these articles to find out more about vaccine safety, plus the risks and benefits:

Vaccine risks and benefits

How do I know that vaccination is safe?

Vaccine ingredients

Vaccine myths and truths