Benefits of Vaccination

Vaccinations have become standard medial practice across the world because of the many benefits they offer to people of all ages, but most particularly vulnerable groups like children. Vaccination is effectively a primer for your body’s natural defences, preparing you for conditions which can, without vaccination, cause serious and even fatal illnesses.

The world before vaccination

Vaccination has had dramatically changed the profile of diseases across the world. By conferring protection against diseases like smallpox, this practice has turned global epidemics into non-existent conditions. Smallpox is an excellent example as before vaccinations were developed against it, this condition was responsible for countless deaths across the world.

Since the development of a smallpox vaccination this disease has actually been eradicated, and no one need worry about catching this horribly disfiguring and often fatal disease.

Before vaccinations were developed the only way your body could develop resistance to a condition (referred to as immunity) was through exposure. You would have to catch a disease and survive it in order to develop immunity to it. Vaccines spare the need for a risky first time exposure, thereby dramatically reducing the incidence of dangerous, virulent conditions.

What are the benefits of vaccinating?

Vaccination confers the phenomenal benefit of protecting you and others from conditions that can cause lifelong disability or even death. These acute diseases often overwhelm your body’s natural defences if you haven’t been exposed to the condition previously, and through vaccination life expectancies and disease incidences are vastly improved.

Vaccines not only protect individuals, they also stop the spread of disease to the people around you, conferring their protection to communities as a whole. By preparing your body to deal with particular infections, the period during which the condition is contagious is shortened significantly, effectively stopping the spread of the bacteria or virus in question. The protection conferred by vaccination to groups of people is referred to as group or (less flatteringly) herd immunity.

Vaccinations also benefit the NHS and country as a whole by preventing disease. Prevention is almost always more cost beneficial than treating a disease, particularly serious conditions which require hospitalisation and extensive treatments. Routine childhood vaccination saves the NHS and health services across the globe millions if not more every year.

Through vaccination the incidence of diseases like polio, Diphtheria, and smallpox have been completely removed.

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