Question

Explain the meaning of vaccination.

Answer 1

Vaccination is a safe, simple and effective way of protecting an individual against harmful diseases before the individual comes in contact with the disease. A vaccine is a type of pre-medication which trains the body’s immune system to fight a disease before the body comes in actual contact to the disease.

Complete answer:
Vaccines contain a virus or a microorganism in a live, weakened or killed state or toxins or proteins from the organism against which immunity needs to be obtained. The process of administering vaccines to help the immune system develop proper antibodies and protection against a disease is known as Vaccination.

For vaccination, the individual is injected with certain molecules (present on all bacteria and viruses) from the pathogen. These molecules act as antigens and trigger an immune response in the body. The immune system safely learns to recognise them as hostile invaders, produce antibodies against them and remember them for further contact. When the pathogen reappears, the immune system recognises the antigen immediately and attacks the pathogen aggressively before it can spread and cause disease.

Additional information:
Now, the world has vaccines to prevent more than 20 life threatening diseases including diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, influenza and measles. Presently, numerous researchers and scientists are struggling to find an appropriate vaccine for the COVID-19 outbreak.

There are five major type of vaccines- attenuated or live vaccines, inactivated vaccines, toxoid vaccines, conjugate vaccines and subunit vaccines

Note: Vaccination prevents a disease rather than treating the disease when it has already infected an individual. Vaccines reduce the risks of getting a disease by working with the body’s natural defence system to build protection against it.