Class 9 Biology: How Immunization Works And Why Vaccination Is A Must

We have all heard the saying, “prevention is better than cure”. It refers to the difference between vaccines and medicines. While medicines cure infections, vaccines prevent them.

Vaccination is the most cost-effective way to protect against infectious conditions. It has greatly reduced the incidence of many diseases. In some cases, vaccines have successfully eradicated diseases such as polio, smallpox which were once a threat to mankind.

The word vaccine is derived from the Latin word “vacca” meaning cow. This was used by Edward Jenner as the first vaccine developed was against the cowpox virus.

In simple language, a vaccine is any substance that is introduced into the body to prevent the disease produced by pathogens. The act of introducing vaccines is “vaccination”. After vaccination, the body gets ready to fight against infections and this is “immunization”.

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Types Of Vaccines

When antigens enter our body, they trigger the formation of “antibodies”. An Antigen is an antibody generating agent. Thus vaccines work in a similar way. Vaccines are administered into our body to trigger antibody formation. Only pathogens are capable of this and vaccines, too, are actually pathogens too but either dead or weakened, that is, “attenuated”.

Thus, we can say that vaccination “programmes” the immune system to remember a particular pathogen and this is termed as “primary response”.

In traditional vaccines, the entire pathogen – dead or weakened – is inserted into the body. Newer vaccines are prepared using a different technique. The newer vaccines are DNA Vaccines.

A DNA vaccine transfects a specific antigen-coding DNA sequence into the cells of an organism as a mechanism to induce an immune response.

Thus vaccination saves lives and is necessary to survive serious infection.

The only way this COVID-19 pandemic will be over is through ample precaution and vaccination.So do not miss your jab. Save yourself and also people around you.