10 Interesting Facts about Vaccines

One of these following facts about vaccines will be really important, especially for parents. Vaccine is a a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins or one of its surface proteins. The agent stimulates the body’s immune system to recognize the agent as foreign, destroy it, and keep a record of it, so that the immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these microorganisms that it later encounters. To get to know more about it, here are some facts about vaccines you may consider important to your health.

Facts about vaccines 1: Eradicating Disease

In the past 60 years, vaccines helped eradicate one disease (Smallpox) and are close to eradicating another (Polio).

Facts about vaccines 2: Impact of Child Vaccines

The impact of child vaccines is magnified when used in conjunction with other health efforts like antibiotics, oral rehydration salts, bednets, and vitamins.

Facts about vaccines 3: Herd Immunity

Vaccines cause “herd immunity”, which means if the majority of people in a community have been vaccinated against a disease, an unvaccinated person is less likely to get sick because others are less likely to get sick and spread the disease.

Facts about vaccines 4: Reducing Measles Death

Vaccines helped reduce measles deaths globally by 78 percent between 2000 and 2008. In sub-Saharan Africa, deaths dropped by 92 percent in the same period.

Facts about vaccines 5: Stopping Pneumonia

There are existing vaccines that could stop rotavirus and pneumonia—two conditions that kill nearly 3 million children under the age of 5 every year.

Facts about vaccines 6: New and Improved Vaccines

New or improved vaccines are currently being developed for HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and neglected tropical diseases. Researchers estimate that a viable malaria vaccine could be ready for children in the developing world as early as 2015.

Facts about vaccines 7: GAVI Alliance

The GAVI Alliance has supported the immunization of more than 288 million children and as a result averted more than 5 million child deaths since 2000.

Facts about vaccines 8: Disease Prevented by Vaccines

Most diseases prevented by vaccines are no longer common in the United States. If vaccines weren’t used, just a few cases could quickly turn into tens or hundreds of thousands.

Facts about vaccines 9: Killed

Some vaccines contain killed, but previously virulent, micro-organisms that have been destroyed with chemicals, heat, radioactivity or antibiotics. Examples are the influenza vaccine, cholera vaccine, bubonic plague vaccine, polio vaccine, hepatitis A vaccine and rabies vaccine.

Facts about vaccines 10: Types

There are several types of vaccines in use. These represent different strategies used to try to reduce risk of illness, while retaining the ability to induce a beneficial immune response.

Those who study and observe in health department may consider those facts about vaccines really helpful. While those who aren’t, hope you would find these vaccines facts really interesting to read.