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Overview

Vaccination is the administration of agent-specific, but relatively harmless, antigenic components that in vaccinated individuals can induce protective immunity against the corresponding infectious agent. In practice, the terms vaccination and immunization are often used interchangeably. Vaccination is highly effective to prevent some particular infections. Vaccines are safe with minimal adverse reactions. vaccination can prevents illness, disability and death from vaccine-preventable diseases including cervical cancer, diphtheria, hepatitis B, measles, mumps, pertussis, pneumonia, polio, rotavirus diarrhea, rubella and tetanus. Vaccines help develop immunity by imitating an infection. This type of infection, however, does not cause illness, but it does cause the immune system to produce T-lymphocytes and antibodies. Immunization currently averts an estimated 2 to 3 million deaths every year. An additional 1.5 million deaths could be avoided, however, if global vaccination coverage improves. An estimated 19.4 million infants worldwide are still missing out on basic vaccines. The material administrated as vaccine, can either be live, but weakened forms of pathogens such as bacteria or viruses, killed or inactivated forms of these pathogens, or purified material such as proteins.
Benjamin Jesty is notable as perhaps the first person recorded to have vaccinated with cowpox in order to artificially induce immunity to smallpox in the epidemic of 1774. The term vaccination was first used by Edward Jenner an English physician 22 years later in 1796. Louis Pasteur further adapted in his pioneering work in microbiology. Vaccination (vacca in latin means cow) is so named because the first vaccine was derived from a virus affecting cow, the relatively benign cowpox virus, which provides a degree of immunity to smallpox, a contagious and deadly disease.