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The World health organization defines a vaccine as “ A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism, and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins, or one of its surface proteins.” (World Health Organization, 2018). Currently, in South Africa, there are no mandatory vaccines even though the tuberculosis vaccine (BCG) and the polio vaccine used to be mandatory in South Africa until 1987. Currently, the department of health provides several free vaccines in its clinics such as hepatitis B, tetanus, measles, Diptheria, tuberculosis, and polio to children under the age of 12. There are several pros to vaccines including reduced infant mortality rates and several alleged cons such as heavy metal poisoning.
The pros to vaccines can be very obvious with vaccines claimed to be the second most cost-efficient measure a government can implement after clean water by the world bank. Vaccines have saved millions of lives over the last two hundred years ever since their discovery by Edward Jenner in the eighteen hundreds. Before we talk about the actual pros of vaccines let’s discuss how vaccines work. As our immune system comes into contact with a foreign bacteria it needs to learn how to fight this bacteria by working out what kills it efficiently but this takes time and when a child who has not fully developed their immune system comes into contact with an infection that it doesn’t know how to fight it even if it is an infection that is not dangerous to a grown human it can cause serious damage to the child ranging anywhere from minor defects all the way to mental damage to paralysis and even death. This is the reason why vaccines are important as they have the ability to either prevent the infection from damaging the body all the way to preventing the damage in the first place. Vaccines are created in the lab, especially for each vaccine, and are checked by many different national (such as the CDC or center for disease control in the United States of America) or international institutions (such as the WHO or world health organization) after the vetting process, it is placed in production by various different pharmacological companies such as Glaxo Smith Kline. Once this is done it is distributed to the various clinics or other governmental or private health institutions all over the world. The vaccines are injected into the bloodstream. They are mainly made out of either attenuated/live vaccines or inactivated vaccines. The difference between the live and dead vaccines is that live vaccines are made of very weakened cells of the dangerous bacteria, it is the most effective of the two methods as the live cells are better teachers however this method is used for the less deadly diseases such as the rubella vaccine (MMR), varicella (chickenpox), measles and mumps. However, children with weakened immune systems or who are on chemotherapy can not take these as their immune systems may not even be strong enough to fight off the weakened bacteria. The second type of vaccine is the non-living vaccine which uses no living bacteria. This type is not as effective as the living type and it often requires several uses to build immunity as opposed to once or twice for the living type. More dangerous diseases are vaccinated in this way as since the bacteria is dead it can not fight back which also causes it to be less effective as previously mentioned. The types of diseases vaccinated against in this way are the polio vaccine and the rabies vaccine. These are generally safe for people as the bacteria cannot cause harm. A major pro to vaccines is obviously how they save lives, especially among children between the age of 0 to 12 they can be extremely vulnerable to many diseases which can be prevented by vaccines. Smallpox and several other diseases used to cause terror all over the world especially smallpox which is credited with the deaths of over ninety percent of native north and south Americans during the early colonialization of those continents as the Europeans brought diseases to which those people had no immunity. Now in modern society such diseases are rarely seen in hospitals due to modern medicine in which vaccines have been a major factor. Vaccines have led to major drops in child mortality rates from 43,3% in 1800 to just 3,91% in 2017 (Roser, 2017). A more tangible figure is that the average daily drop in child mortality rate is 0.0008%. Even more of a decline could be seen in the future as according to the WHO 19.9 million children did not routine life-saving vaccines (World Health Organization, 2018). This is obviously a personal and global benefit as personally, it leads to less emotional strain on families who would have lost children but due to modern medicine don’t need to suffer through that. A global benefit is that these children would grow up and contribute to society as well as have children of their own which have contributed to the exponential global population increase. Not only have children benefitted but even older people have benefitted from reported cases of Diptheria in the US before vaccinations were reduced from 175 000 to 0 in 2006. Measles from 500 000 to 55, polio from 16 000 to 0 as well as others (Weinbaum, 2007). This obviously helps the world so that fewer people are physically damaged by these dangerous diseases as well as preventing a further burden on governments who need to provide care to these people. Vaccines have not been as controversial in South Africa as in the developed world.
There are several alleged cons and myths regarding vaccines. A common myth is that vaccines contain mercury which causes autism in children. This has never been scientifically proven but it still it raises the question of why is there mercury in vaccines. The mercury in vaccines is in the form of a compound called thimerosal which contains mercury. Thimerosal is used in vaccines because it prevents the growth of dangerous bacteria, it is also used as a preservative in multi-dose vials of flu vaccines, and it is also used in two other vaccines for children. It is used in the manufacturing process. When each new needle is inserted into the multi-dose vial, it is possible for microbes to get into the vial. The preservative thus prevents contamination in the viall when individual doses are taken from it. Receiving a vaccine contaminated by bacteria can be deadly, especially for children. Today except for some multi-dose flu vials no thimerosal is given in child vaccines. Another common belief is that the use of aluminum in vaccines causes brain damage and autoimmune disorders. This has been proven incorrect by several researchers but the question that many people ask is why is aluminum in vaccines and how is it safe. Aluminium is used as an adjuvant in vaccines. An adjuvant is a vaccine component that helps to increase the immune response to the vaccine which leads to stronger immunity so lesser quantities of the vaccine as well as fewer doses are required for the same effect. Aluminium is only used in dead vaccines which as previously mentioned only contain dead bacteria. Vaccines containing adjuvants are tested extensively in trials before being licensed as if they are done incorrectly could lead to some of the conditions that some people are afraid of. The aluminum contained in vaccines is similar to that found in a liter of baby formula. While babies receive about 4.4 milligrams of aluminum in the first six months of life from vaccines, they receive more than that in their diet. Breast-fed babies consume about 7 milligrams, formula-fed infants consume about 38 milligrams, and babies who are fed soy formula consume almost 117 milligrams of aluminum during the first six months of life. Some people also believe that vaccines are not properly tested before being licensed. People believe that pharmaceutical companies get free reign when it comes to medicines especially vaccines which are believed to be some of the highest-grossing pharmaceuticals (which is not true as they don’t even fall into the top ten). Even though there have been very minor instances of manufacturing mistakes in the past pharmaceutical companies are kept by both national governments and international organizations (mainly the WHO) on a very tight leash. The testing techniques are firstly the development of the vaccine, then the extensive testing in the lab over the course of several years, then testing on certain that share certain human characteristics pertaining to the disease, if that is successful then they go through phase 1 of human trials which consists of 10-20 human volunteers, this phase they search mainly for dangerous side effects that may have not been found and may last up to three years, if non have been found then they go to phase 2 human tests in which they use hundreds of volunteers which would last several years, in this phase the scientists work out doses and quantity of doses to be effective, in phase three which uses thousands of volunteers and can last up to a decade the researchers compare their vaccine to other already licensed vaccines to see if there are any adverse side effects compared to the already licensed vaccine. If all the tests are reliable then the researchers license it to the national vaccine controller of whichever country they are in who then extensively tests the vaccine to make sure it actually works and then they scrutinize the manufacturing processes. Once the vaccine is properly licensed then they are still required to submit samples of each batch to the regulator. Another belief is that pharmaceutical companies are not required to compensate people who have been adversely affected by their vaccines which is false as in countries where vaccines are mandatory the government is generally required to pay compensation to the victims as well as if it is the manufacturer’s fault they may lose their license to produce the vaccine. It is known that sometimes mistakes do happen that have unfortunate consequences and even though governments, organizations, and companies all try their best to treat every adverse effect that happens there are still some that do happen. According to the CDC (Weinbaum, 2007), the yearly quantity of now vaccine-able diseases before vaccines in the USA was 1 060 000 and now the quantity of those diseases is 22 500 and the amount of adverse vaccine-related effects is 15 400. Making it 1 060 000 to 37 900.
So as you can see just by the numbers above alone vaccines are reliable, and safe and they save the lives of millions of people per year and can save millions more if people were fully aware of the whole story and not just parts.
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