Vaccination is a simple, safe, and effective way of protecting people against harmful diseases, before they come into contact with them. It uses your body’s natural defenses to build resistance to specific infections and makes your immune system stronger.
Many diseases that were once common—such as polio, measles, mumps, and tetanus—are now rare or well controlled because of vaccines.
We may not like getting vaccinated, but it has contributed greatly to our protection from harmful, if not deadly, diseases.
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Basic Differences Between: | |
VACCINE | MEDICINE |
Are normally given in ‘Schedules’, which must be adhered to. | Use of drugs / medicines is individualized. |
Vaccines are given to PREVENT disease. | Drugs are given to TREAT, DIAGNOSE or sometimes PREVENT diseases. |
Vaccines are given to protect the whole population. | Drugs are usually for the benefit of an individual. |
Vaccines are given to build our IMMUNITY towards a particular Virus or Bacteria. | Drugs are given to treat or cure a Virus or Bacteria or other malfunction of body after it attacks us. |
MEDICINES are chemicals or compounds used to cure, halt, or prevent diseases or ease symptoms or help in the diagnosis of illnesses. Many medicines are developed from substances found in nature, lab or are extracted from plants. Hence, medicines for treatments are used when patients are already sick with a certain disease, or sometimes as a way to prevent the onset of an illness.
VACCINE is a type of medicine that trains the body’s immune system so that it can fight a disease it has not come into contact with before. Vaccines are designed to prevent disease, rather than treat a disease once you have caught it. Vaccines harness the natural activity of your immune system.
Few Definitions:
- Vaccines are products that produce immunity to a specific disease. When you are immune to a disease, it means you are protected against that disease (you can be exposed to it without becoming sick). Most vaccines are given by injection (needle), but some are given orally (by mouth) or nasally (sprayed into the nose).
- Vaccination is the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.
- Immunization is the process by which a person becomes protected against a disease. This term is often used interchangeably with vaccination.
HOW DO VACCINES WORK?
Vaccines work by training and preparing the body’s natural defenses – the immune system – to recognize and fights off viruses and bacteria. If the body is exposed to those disease-causing pathogens later, it will be ready to destroy them quickly – which prevents illness.
Our immune system is made up of a specialized network of organs, cells and tissues that work together to help protect us against diseases. When a disease-causing germ (virus or bacteria) enters our body, our immune system:
- Recognizes the germ as being a foreign body.
- Responds by making special proteins (called antibodies, they are proteins produced naturally by the immune system to fight disease) that help destroy the germ. Most of the time, our immune system cannot act fast enough to stop the germ from making us sick. But by destroying the germ, it can usually help us get well again.
- Our immune system then remembers this germ that made us sick and how to destroy it. That way, if we are exposed to the same disease germ in the future, our immune system can quickly destroy it before it has a chance to make us sick. This protection is called Immunity.
- Recognizing the invading germ (virus or bacteria).
- Produces antibodies.
- Remembers the disease and how to fight it. If we are then exposed to the germ in the future, our immune system can quickly destroy it before you become unwell.
Our immune systems are designed to remember. Once exposed to one or more doses of a vaccine, we typically remain protected against a disease for years, decades or even a lifetime. This is what makes vaccines so effective. Rather than treating a disease after it occurs, vaccines prevent us in the first instance from getting sick.
Vaccines contain only killed or weakened forms of germs like viruses or bacteria, they do not cause the disease or put you at risk of its complications.
Vaccine is therefore a safe and clever way to produce an immune response in the body, without causing illness.
COMMON SIDE EFFECTS FROM VACCINES
Like any medicine, vaccines can cause mild side effects like:
- Pain, Swelling, Soreness or Redness where the shot was given
- Mild Fever
- Chills
- Feeling Tired
- Headache
- Muscle and Joint Aches
- Fainting can also happen after any medical procedure, including vaccinations.
These side effects or reactions go away within few days on their own. Severe or long-lasting side effects are extremely rare. Vaccines are continually monitored for safety, to detect rare adverse events.
Keep in mind that most common side effects are a sign that your body is starting to build immunity (protection) against a disease.
WHY IS VACCINATION IMPORTANT?
When we get vaccinated, we are not just protecting ourselves, but also those around us. Some people, like those who are seriously ill, are advised not to get certain vaccines – so they depend on the rest of us to get vaccinated and help reduce the spread of disease.
When a person gets vaccinated against a disease, their risk of infection is also reduced – so they are also less likely to transmit the virus or bacteria to others. As more people in a community get vaccinated, fewer people remain vulnerable, and there is less possibility for an infected person to pass the pathogen on to another person. Lowering the possibility for a pathogen to circulate in the community protects those who cannot be vaccinated (due to health conditions, like allergies, or their age) from the disease targeted by the vaccine.
'Herd Immunity', also known as 'Population Immunity', is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when immunity develops in a population either through vaccination or through previous infection. In communities with high immunity, the non-immune people have a lower risk of disease than they otherwise would, but their reduced risk results from the immunity of people in the community in which they are living (i.e., herd immunity) not because they are personally immune. Even after herd immunity has first reached and a reduced risk of disease among unimmunized people is observed, this risk will keep falling if vaccination coverage continues to increase. When vaccine coverage is very high, the risk of disease among those who are non-immune can become similar to those who are truly immune.
There are more than 70 potential coronavirus vaccines in the works, with a number in early human trials and few have started the vaccination process.
Treatment from COVID-19, is helping patients sickened by this virus, survive and recover more quickly.
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