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Why Vaccines Are So Important?
Vaccines are very effective in preventing death and disabilities due to certain contagious and viral diseases. They save enormous money in health related expenses every year. Vaccines have been very useful in reducing a majority of infectious diseases from spreading further and almost eradicated some of the major endemics like small pox, chicken pox, measles and even polio to a great extent. Recent inventions include a vaccine for the dangerously endemic bird flu or chicken gunya.
A decision to vaccinate is a decision to safeguard and protect individuals and entire communities from diseases that spread through a person-to-person transmission. Where immunization programmes are targeted at total community immunity, the likelihood of transmission from an infected person to another is greatly diminished. Learning the causes for the infection and the spread of it helps in developing vaccines that can in the long run create immunization among humans.
The best mode of preventing and reducing the severity of flu is a timely and regular development, proper disbursement and prompt administration of the influenza vaccine. The influenza vaccine that is used each coming year is an inactivated trivalent vaccine, which means that the flu vaccine contains three inactivated (or "killed") flu viruses (one influenza B and two influenza A strains). Because the currently available permitted vaccines are inactivated vaccines, the flu vaccine is incapable of causing the flu contrary to common misconceptions. The effectiveness and plausibility of the trivalent vaccine depends upon the match between the strains of influenza that are circulating and the viruses in the vaccine. Of course there is no guarantee that the strains selected for creating the vaccine will be the strains that go around during the following flu seasons, the match between the vaccine strain and the circulating strain being successful and good about more than 75% of the time.
Influenza vaccine is highly recommended for people maintaining close contact with high-risk persons and people who are already infected. It includes health care providers, Para-medics etc.
The vaccination programme during a pandemic will probably be different from current annual flu shot programmed and in usage in several aspects. The warning period in which time precautions can be properly and promptly taken is usually very short and limited before the break of a pandemic. Because the vaccine manufacturing process takes a minimum of six months, it is likely that a shortage of vaccines may be faced and enough vaccines may not be available at the beginning of the pandemic to vaccinate each and every one
Two doses of vaccine are necessary for a person to be fully protected against the virus. People who are at a high risk of getting a serious case of influenza or other complications should get the vaccine on a priority basis.
People with chronic problems like asthma, diabetes and heart ailment and people who are prone to frequent attacks of common colds and people with bronchial allergies run a high risk of flu attack or related problems.