CDC: Vaccines Prevented Over 1 Million U.S. Child Deaths in Past Three Decades

ATLANTA — Routine childhood vaccinations have saved millions of lives and trillions of dollars over the past three decades, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report released last year.

The analysis found that for children born in the United States between 1994 and 2023, immunizations prevented an estimated 508 million cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations, and 1.13 million deaths.

“These numbers are a powerful reminder of why vaccines are one of the most important public health achievements of our time,” the CDC said in its findings. “The impact has been profound—not only in terms of lives saved but in economic benefits as well.”

The CDC estimated that routine vaccinations resulted in $540 billion in direct healthcare savings and $2.7 trillion in broader societal savings, including reduced lost productivity and long-term disability costs.

The routine childhood immunization schedule includes vaccines against diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella, polio, diphtheria, whooping cough, and chickenpox—illnesses that once claimed thousands of lives in the U.S. each year. Thanks to widespread vaccination, some of these diseases are now considered eliminated domestically, while others occur only rarely.

Public health experts say the findings reinforce the importance of maintaining high vaccination coverage, particularly at a time when vaccine hesitancy has been growing. “We’re talking about millions of hospitalizations and deaths that never happened because parents chose to vaccinate their kids,” said Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Brown University. “If coverage slips, those diseases can come roaring back.”

The CDC emphasized that childhood vaccines remain one of the safest and most cost-effective public health tools available, with benefits extending across generations.