Although vaccines are required for entry into school in most places in the United States, the government does allow for exceptions, like religious reasons.

In the last few years, the rates of vaccine-preventable illness have been on the rise. In most cases, these outbreaks began with children who were unvaccinated. To deal with this threat, some schools in New York have been refusing to allow unvaccinated children to attend school. Several parents thought this was unfair and filed lawsuits. Just recently, though, a court ruled in favor of the city schools.

The court made the right decision. Vaccine policy depends not only on the added protection that vaccines provide for those who get shots, but also on the decreased likelihood that anyone will come into contact with the disease. This is known as community immunity. It refers to the fact that when enough people are immunized, then there really can’t be an outbreak. And if there can’t be an outbreak, then everyone is protected.

This is important, because there are people who cannot be given immunizations for various reasons. For example, small babies can’t be given all vaccines.

In 1995, the chicken pox vaccine was introduced in the United States. Over time, more and more children received it. In 2011, a study looked at how the program affected the number of children who died from the disease.

The first thing noted in the paper was that death from chicken pox went down considerably after the vaccine was introduced. From 2001 through 2007, the rates of death remained much lower, with just a few children dying from chicken pox nationally each year.

What’s more from 2004 through 2007, not one child less than 1 year of age died in the United States from chicken pox. This is important, because we cannot give the chicken pox vaccine to babies. In other words, all those babies were saved not because we vaccinated them against this illness, but because older children were.

Therefore, people who refuse to vaccinate their children aren’t just putting themselves at risk — they’re putting everyone else in danger, too.

While I was teaching in China, I became interested in acupuncture (针灸). It was after returning from China and witnessing how successful it had been that I reached the decision to become an acupuncturist myself. I was lucky to discover that the town where I lived had a famous college of traditional acupuncture.

Alternative medicine such as acupuncture is particularly important for me because I firmly believe that it works on the level of body, mind and spirit. This is very different from Western medicine which is supposed to work only on the body. When a person is ill, it is believed that there’s something in their life that is putting their energy levels out of balance. What alternative therapies (疗法) try do to is kelp to gradually push that energy back into balance. The result is that any disease present might naturally disappear as it cannot survive when energies are balanced.

I’ve treated a wide range of people for various conditions, for example people suffering from stress and anxiety. To acquire a qualification in acupuncture, I took a course that lasted three years. I had to go to the college about one weekend in three. I also had a large amount of homework and practical work to do, which I did two or three evenings a week. This involved locating pints on different people. As you can imagine, this isn’t straightforward as people are of different sizes and have differently shaped bodies.

In the future I hope to set up an alternative health clinic which will involve myself as an acupuncturist but perhaps other people as well. I’d like to work with people who provide treatments such as rubbing (按摩) and pressing people’s feet in a special way to help them relax and feel well. I’d like to set it up somewhere in the countryside, where people could feel free from the stress of life.

The medical world is gradually realizing that the quality of the environment in hospitals may play an important role in helping patients to get better.

As part of a nationwide effort in Britain to bring art out of the museums and into public places, some of the countries’ best artists have been called in to change older hospitals and to soften the hard edges of modern buildings. Of the 2,500 Nation Health Service hospitals in Britain, almost 100 now have very valuable collections of present art in passages, waiting areas and treatment rooms.

These recent movements were first started by one artist, Peter Senior, who set up his studio at a Manchester hospital in Northern England during the early 1700s. He felt that artist had lost his place in modern society, and that art should be enjoyed by a wider audience.

A common hospital waiting room might have as many as 5,000 visitors each week. What a better place to hold a regular exhibition of art! Senior held the first exhibition of his own paintings in the out-patients’ waiting area of the Manchester Royal Hospital in 1975. Believed to be Britain’s first hospital artist, Senior was so much in demand that he was soon joined by a team of six young art school graduates.

The effect is striking. Now in the passages and waiting rooms, the visitor experiences a full view of fresh colours, playful images and restful courtyards. The quality of the environment may reduce the need for expensive drugs when a patient is recovering from an illness. A study has shown that patients who had a view onto garden needed half the number of strong pain killers compared with patients who had no view at all or only a brick wall to look at.