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Immunize Your Children. By Jacob Jones. What is Immunization?. Vaccines work to prime your immune system against future “attacks” by a particular disease. There are vaccines against both viral and bacterial pathogens, or disease-causing agents. How do they work?.
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Immunize Your Children By Jacob Jones
What is Immunization? Vaccines work to prime your immune system against future “attacks” by a particular disease. There are vaccines against both viral and bacterial pathogens, or disease-causing agents.
How do they work? When a pathogen enters your body, your immune system generates antibodies to try to fight it off. Depending on the strength of your immune response and how effectively the antibodies fight off the pathogen, you may or may not get sick. As a result, you gain future immunity against the disease without having gotten sick: if you’re exposed to the pathogen again, your immune system will recognize it and be able to fight it off.
Why is Immunization important? Provides long term to life time protection. Builds a defense against future exposure to disease. Prevents 12 potentially deadly diseases.
continued Protects others. Decreases the severity of the case if the vaccinated person gets disease. Decreases the spread of contagious disease through “herd immunity.”
Herd Immunity When a critical portion of a community is immunized against a contagious disease, most members of the community are protected against that disease because there is little opportunity for an outbreak. This is known as “community immunity.”
Why some are against Immunizations Believe may cause more harm than good. Don’t like the risk Organizations or individuals spread false information. Disagree with ingredients found in vaccine.
Facts Immunizations DO NOT cause Autism. Licensing of a vaccine can take up to 10 years. Once a vaccine is in the use of the general public, it’s safety is monitored. Like any medicine occasionally there are reactions.
Conclusion One of the greatest public health developments in the 20th century Diseases that once killed tens of thousands of infants every year in the U.S. are now avoided by vaccination. Public health benefits far outweigh the risk.
Sources http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/pages/communityimmunity.aspx http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/top-20-questions-about-vaccination Google Images Bruce Gellin, MD, MPH, Executive Director, National Network for Immunization Information