What is a vaccine ?
Vaccine is a substance or biological preparation, containing some version of actual disease-causing organisms (either weakened or dead) that improves immunity to a particular disease. vaccines are also called immunizations,
Why vaccines are important?
This vaccines are used to treat or prevent disease by provoking the body to respond with antibodies.
The vaccines boost your body’s own defence system, which is also called the immune system. Vaccines create immunity that protects you from an infection without causing the suffering of the disease itself.
First vaccine in the world
The first successful vaccine was for smallpox, in 1796.
How vaccines will work
Most vaccines contain a little bit of a disease germ that is weak or dead. Vaccines do NOT contain the type of germ that makes you sick. Some vaccines do not contain any germs. Having this little bit of the germ inside your body makes your body’s defence system build antibodies to fight off this kind of germ. Antibodies help trap and kill germs that could lead to disease.
Your body can make antibodies in two ways
First: by getting the disease
Second: by getting the vaccine.
Getting the vaccine is a much safer way to make antibodies without having the suffering of the disease itself and the risk of becoming disabled or even dying. Antibodies stay with you for a long time. They remember how to fight off the germ. If the real germ that causes this disease (not the vaccine) enters your body in the future, your defence system knows how to fight it off. Often, your defence system will remember how to fight a germ for the rest of your life. Sometimes, your defence system needs a booster shot to remind it how to fight off this germ.
Types of vaccine
Live, attenuated vaccines
Recombinant vector vaccines
A combination vaccine consists of two or more different vaccines that have been combined into a single shot.
Combination vaccines started to use in mid-1940’s. Examples of combination vaccines in current use are: DTaP(diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis), trivalent IPV (three strains of inactivated polio vaccine), MMR (measles-mumps-rubella), DTaP-Hib, and Hib-Hep B (hepatitis B). Simultaneous vaccination is when more than one vaccine shot is administered during the same doctor’s visit, usually in separate limbs (e.g. one in each arm). An example of simultaneous vaccination might be administering DTap in one arm or leg and IPV in another arm or leg during the same visit. Giving a child several vaccinations during the same visit offers two practical advantages. First, we want to immunize children as quickly as possible to give them protection during the vulnerable early months of their lives. Second, giving several vaccinations at the same time means fewer office visits. This saves parents both time and money, and may be less traumatic for the child.