| Parents are constantly concerned about the health and safety of their children and
they take many steps to protect them. These preventive measures range from child-proof
door latches to child safety seats. In the same respect, vaccines work to safeguard
children from illnesses and death caused by infectious diseases. Vaccines protect
children by helping prepare their bodies to fight deadly diseases..
How Do Vaccines Work?
- There are a series of steps that a person�s body goes through in learning how to
fight off a vaccine-preventable disease:
First - A vaccine is given by a shot or liquid by mouth. An alternative
needle-free route is the use of inhalation by aerosol and powder. Most vaccines
contain a weakened or dead disease germ or part of a disease germ. Other vaccines
use inactivated toxins. Some of the bacteria that cause disease do so by producing
toxins that invade the bloodstream.
Next - The body makes antibodies against the weakened or dead germs in
the vaccine.
Then - These antibodies can fight the real disease germs � which can
be lurking all around � if they invade the child�s body. The antibodies will
know how to destroy them and the child will not become ill. Most vaccines don�t
cause the diseases that are usually caused by viruses and bacteria.
Finally - Protective antibodies stay on guard in the child�s body to
safeguard it from the real disease germs.
- After exposure to a live, weakened, or dead germ, the antibodies or memory cells
fight infectious diseases and usually stay in a person�s immune system for a
lifetime. This protects a person from getting sick again. This protection is called immunity.
Why Are Vaccines Important?
- It is true that newborn babies are immune to many diseases because they have
antibodies they got from their mothers. However, this immunity only lasts about a
year. Further, most young children do not have maternal immunity from diphtheria,
whooping cough, polio, tetanus, hepatitis B, or Haemophilus influenzae type b.
- Immunizing individual children also helps to protect the health of our community.
People who are sick will be less likely to be exposed to disease germs that can be
passed around by unvaccinated children. Immunization also slows down or stops
disease outbreaks.
- If a child is not vaccinated and is exposed to a disease germ, the child�s body
may not be strong enough to fight the disease. Before vaccines, many children died
of diseases vaccines prevent, like whooping cough, measles, and polio. Those same
germs exist today, but babies are now protected by vaccines and so we do not see
these diseases as often.
CDC, National Immunization Program: http://www.cdc.gov/nip
Last updated: May 2001
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