Why do some children get the disease despite being vaccinated?
This is possible, since no vaccine is 100% effective. A small proportion of those who are vaccinated will remain susceptible to the disease. However, in the cases in which illness does occur in vaccinated individuals, the illness is usually much less severe than in those who were not vaccinated. The protection provided by vaccines differ. For example, if 100 children are vaccinated with MMR, 5 to 10 of the fully vaccinated children might still catch measles, mumps or rubella (although the disease will often be less severe in vaccinated children). If 100 children are vaccinated with a full schedule of pertussis-containing vaccines, 20 of the children might still get whooping cough but once again the disease is often less severe in these vaccinated children. To put it another way, if you do not vaccinate 100 children with MMR vaccine, and the children are exposed to measles, all of them will catch the disease with a risk of high rates of complications like pneumonia (lung infection) or e