Vaccines

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Original Editor - Lucinda hampton

Top Contributors - Lucinda hampton, Sukhi Dhaliwal, Kim Jackson, Kirenga Bamurange Liliane and Nupur Smit Shah  

Introduction

Vaccination is one of the most effective ways to prevent diseases. Vaccines protect against more than 25 debilitating or life-threatening diseases, including measles, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, meningitis, influenza, tetanus, typhoid and cervical cancer.

A vaccine is a pharmacologic compound that improves a person's immunity to a particular disease.

• When a disease-causing bacterium or virus invades the human body, the immune system recognizes the material as foreign, usually by detecting specific protein portions of the invading organism, known as antigens.
• Vaccines contain a form of the disease-causing agent, whether it be a weakened or killed form of the microbe itself, an inactivated version of its toxins, or a protein from the surface of the microbe.
• By introducing a form of the agent, the vaccine presents the antigen to the immune system, allowing it to recognize the antigen as foreign and develop antibodies and memory T-lymphocytes against those antigens.
• This allows a more rapid and robust immune response should the body be exposed to the organism in the future.
• In the absence of vaccination, the first exposure to the natural organism may prove fatal before the immune system can mount a sufficient immune response.

Currently, the majority of children receive their vaccines on time. However, nearly 20 million worldwide still miss out – putting them at risk of serious diseases, death, disability and ill health.

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