Fighting Disease — Vaccination

Question 1

What does vaccination protect you from?

Answer 1

Future infections

Question 2

.

Question 3

How do vaccinations work?

Answer 3

Vaccinations involve injecting small amounts of dead or inactive pathogens into your body. These carry antigens, which cause your body to produce antibodies to attack them eventhough the pathogen is harmless. If the same type of pathogen appears after, the white blood cells can rapidly mass produce antibodies to kill off the pathogen

Question 4

What are the advantages of vaccination?

Answer 4

Vaccines have helped control lots of communicable diseases that were once common in the UK (e.g. measles)
Small pox no longer occurs
Epidemics can be prevented if a large percentage of the population is vaccinated. That way even the people who aren’t vaccinated are unlikely to catch the disease because there are fewer people to pass it on.

Question 5

What are the disadvantages of vaccination?

Answer 5

Vaccines don’t always work, sometimes they don’t give you immunity
You can sometimes have a bad reaction to a vaccine (e.g. swelling, fever, seizures)