please help me edit my oral *internal screaming* >.<

[bangtanseonyeondumb]

This is for my Year 11 Oral:
Feel free to give me any tips and maybe help me to cut down on words
Try not to be too harsh on my fragile state of being xD

English Persuasive Oral (Antivaccination)

Just imagine. You are playing the role of a devastated mother who is watching her child being admitted to the ICU. The severe dehydration from rotavirus renders your toddler’s pale, limp body on the brink of life and death. Then you realize, a vaccine that you had dismissively turned down a year before could have prevented the illness of your child – a disease that accounts for 3.4% of children’s deaths worldwide.
This is not a tale of fiction, but a harrowing recount of an experience involving real-life people, with real-life consequences.
The Department of Health of the Australian government has suggested that 95% of children must be fully vaccinated to effectively prevent outbreaks of diseases such as measles, yet this number has dropped to as low as 86.5% children in areas of the Gold Coast. In recent years, the staggering drop in immunization rates has been credited to the rise of the anti-vaccination movement, also described as a “regression in modern medicine”.
All over the world, leading countries have been taking measures to encourage their citizens to take a step towards vaccinations.
In Australia, the “No Jab, No Pay” scheme has been implemented where the government withholds Child Care Benefits, Child Care Rebates, and the Family Tax Benefit Part A from parents who refuse to vaccinate their children.
In the United States, children over the age of five must have received vaccinations prior to enrolling in day care centres, as well as both public and private schools.
Much like the case with the mother which we just talked about, losing a child to a preventable disease is incomprehensibly devastating, and it is due to this that vaccinations must be mandatory.

To begin with, vaccinations carries the ability to save a child’s life. According to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, also known as UNICEF, vaccinations prevent an estimated 2.5 million deaths every year, or roughly 285 children an hour. Although no single vaccination has yet proven to be 100% effective, it is said that “almost one-third of deaths among children under the age of five are preventable by vaccine”. Since the time of its implementation, vaccinations have acted to dramatically decrease the rate of disease. Between the 20th century and the last decade, cases of diphtheria, smallpox, and polio in the United States have experienced a 100% decrease, with measles, rubella, and HiB victims dropping to a mere 0.01%.
Furthermore, vaccinations can act to “protect the herd”. Herd immunity occurs when the large majority of a population is vaccinated – this is approximately 19 out of every 20 people. As there is no longer a substantial amount of people left to be infected, the likelihood of disease outbreak is significantly lowered. Also known as community immunity, this method allows for the protection of the more vulnerable members in society, including individuals such as newborn babies, the elderly and people who are unable to be vaccinated due to poor health.

While the backlash to vaccines has been as old as vaccines themselves, it has become a growing movement as parents worldwide refuse to vaccinate their children due to certain perceived fears. One of these perceived fears was initiated in 1998 when Andrew Wakefield published a paper which stated that that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine was linked to autism. The paper was one of the most controversial of its time and shortly after, immunization rates took a plunge and the number of children affected by measles rocketed. Prompted by the public, the medical community underwent an extensive investigation into Wakefield’s claim, reaffirming once again that indeed, no connection exists between vaccinations and the neurological disorder.

As individuals, and as a community, we need to do anything and everything we can to save the lives of our children and ourselves. If vaccinations are one of the strongest, safest and most successful methods to counter life-threatening disease, why do we not use it?