Talking Science: Facts About Vaccines and Herd Immunity

This week is World Immunization Week and what better way to commemorate it than by discussing the facts about vaccines and the importance of herd immunity. But first... What exactly IS a vaccine? A vaccine is a biological agent that stimulates a person's immune system to produce immunity to a specific pathogen, protecting the person from a disease. That's how vaccines work. You get an inactivated, attenuated, or a portion of the version of the pathogen you're hoping to avoid. According to the CDC, routine vaccines given to children in the last two decades will prevent hundreds of millions illnesses, tens of millions hospitalizations, and prevent over 700,000 deaths. And that's just in the U.S. Vaccinations became routine in the late 18th century, when Edward Jenner administered cowpox, which minimally affects humans, to an 8 year-old boy, so he could acquire immunity to the closely related smallpox virus, which is oftentimes deadly. After the success of the first vaccine, doctors sought to find immunizations for a multitude of common -- and deadly -- illnesses. V accines have been created for measles, typhoid, polio, mumps, cholera, influenza, HPV, meningitis, and smallpox just to name a few. What is "Herd Immunity"? Another important aspect of immunization is herd immunity. According to the NIH, herd or community immunity occurs "When a critical portion of a community is immunized against a contagious disease, most members of the community are protected against th...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news