World Immunisation Week is marked every last week of April,it is used to promote the core message that immunisation of every child is vital to prevent diseases and protect life.
The slogan Prevent. Protect. Immunize. carries this message across.
Modern medicine has come a long way from days of herbs and powder to periods of immunization, which is a preventative type of care against diseases.
This feat has made it possible for the slash in child mortality rates by half, saving millions of lives.
IMMUNIZATION:
This is a process by which a person becomes protected against a disease through vaccination. When you get immunized, your body is tricked into thinking that it has been infected with the disease it aims to protect the body from, this forces the body to produce antibodies that kill the germs.
The term Immunization can be used interchangeably with vaccination or inoculation.
WHAT IS A VACCINE?
A vaccine is a product that is usually given in childhood to protect against serious, often deadly diseases such as measles, Polio, hepatitis B e.t.c. By stimulating the body’s natural defenses, they prepare a person’s body to fight the disease faster and more effectively.
A 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. Most medicines don’t work in the same way as a vaccine does as it is a treatment system employed before the disease affects a person, others treat or cure diseases vaccines prevent them. After getting vaccinated, you develop immunity to that disease, without having to get the disease first and dealing with the aftermath if such a disease has no cure.
Vaccines contain the same germs that cause disease in small doses, but they have been either killed or weakened to the point that they don’t make you sick. Some vaccines contain only a part of the disease germ.
Vaccination teaches the body to recognize new diseases. It stimulates the body to make antibodies against antigens of pathogens. It also primes immune cells to remember the types of antigens that cause infection, this allows for a faster response to the disease in the future.
How are vaccines administered?
Through the mouth for infants, the most popular method is through injections, either on the thigh or arms straight to a tissue or muscle depending on the targeted disease.
Vaccines save lives. Measles vaccines alone are estimated to have prevented over 23 million deaths between 2000 and 2018.
That is why WHO and UNICEF choose a week to promote the importance of immunization against some common diseases and even uncommon ones like the Covid-19. Vaccination has become a common life saver especially for infants a protection against diseases that would have caused permanent damage to the body and mind.
Thanks to Volunteers in the health care centers that promote immunization to areas that otherwise wouldn’t get to know that such measures exist, this places are rural dwelling that barely have contact with the mode world.
Vaccination protects lives of individuals in turn protecting the community against adverse cases of diseases.
Spread the world about Immunization, create awareness for its purpose, donate funds to enable volunteers reach more rural settlements. Save a life this week.