Maliah Schafer, 5, who got her flu shot last month, is particularly vulnerable.

Parents don’t enjoy watching their kids get stuck by needles, especially when tears are involved. But those few seconds of pain can be lifesavers, and not just for the children being stuck. Vaccines are essential shields for those who might be infected by the unvaccinated.

All children need protection from the flu and other preventable diseases, but those with other health problems, like Maliah Schafer, need it badly. Maliah, 5, uses a wheelchair and her movement is restricted to facial expressions due to a problem at birth with the spinal cord.

“When your face is the only part that moves, you are very, very expressive,” Dr. Carrie Brown says.

Brown is a general pediatrician and palliative care physician at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. She wants all her patients to be vaccinated, but she is well aware that some parents have doubts.

“The flu shot in particular causes a lot of questions for families because the strain of flu changes from year to year,” she says. “So the flu shot that we’re getting this year is actually based on a prediction of what flu strains we think are gonna happen this year.”

The flu shot is still protective in years when the targeted strains are less prevalent, but they aren’t as effective as they might be otherwise. Early data suggests that this year’s shot is more accurate than in recent years, Brown says.

“Of years to get a flu shot, every year is a good one, but certainly this year is one.” National Influenza Protection Week is Dec. 4-10.

Another concern is that the flu shot will make kids sick, but that worry is unfounded. Vaccines contain dead flu cells, but the body’s immune system recognizes the virus by its shape and sends antibodies to fight the perceived infection. These antibodies remain in the body to fight future infections. The only live virus ever given to children is in a nasal vaccination, Brown said, and those viruses are weakened to the point that they cannot cause infection. Flu symptoms caused by the body’s natural defenses are often confused for the illness itself.

“It works by your body actually responding to it,” Brown says. “Your arm might be sore, you might feel a bit off the next day or two, or kids might run a low-grade fever. But that’s all certainly better than actually getting the flu.”

Vaccines for Maliah and everyone in her household are critical to her survival. But she will come into contact with many people in her daily life that may not have been vaccinated, and that’s why Brown says widespread vaccines are so essential.

Mumps is another preventable threat to Maliah, and several outbreaks in Arkansas have raised concern over the past several months. The MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine provides valuable protection from the disease, but some parents remain wary of a debunked link between the vaccine and autism.

“Mumps can make you very sick,” Brown says. “It’s not something that most of us who are younger pediatricians, younger being in our 20s, 30s, 40s and even 50s, really had much experience with because vaccination is effective.”

A retracted study from 1998 fanned the false autism alarm, but plentiful research since has affirmed the safety of the MMR vaccine.

“It was not good data, but unfortunately when people hear of something like that, it raises their level of concern and they’re less likely to get their children immunized,” Brown says. “As it turns out, you get that vaccine when most family members and pediatricians start to pick up on autistic behaviors in their children. So it’s easy to say this must have caused that.”

Brown urges everyone to get immunized. For people like Maliah, she said, it’s a matter of life and death.