Fighting diseases-vaccination

• When you’re infected with a new pathogen, it takes your white blood cells a few days to learn how to deal with it. By that time you can be pretty ill.
• What do vaccinations involve?

  Injecting small amounts of dead or inactive pathogens.
• What do the dead pathogens carry?

  Antigens which cause your body to produce antibodies to attack them - even though the pathogen is harmless.
• What is an example of a vaccine?

  The MMR vaccine contains weakened versions of the viruses that cause measles , mumps and rubella all in one.
• But if live pathogens of the same type appear after a vaccine, the WBC’s can rapidly mass produce antibodies to kill.
• What is one pro of vaccination?

  Have helped control lots of communicable diseases that were once common in the UK ( polio, measles).
• What is another pro?

  Big outbreaks of disease called epidemics can be prevented if a large percentage of the population is vaccinated. So even the people who aren‘t vaccinated are unlikely to catch the disease because fewer people able to pass it on.
• What if a large number of people aren't vaccinated?

  The disease can spread quickly through them and lots of people will be ill at the same time.
• What is a con of vaccination?

  Don't always work - sometimes they don’t give u immunity.
• What is another con of vaccination?

  Sometimes have a bad reaction to a vaccine e.g swelling or something more serious like fevers or seizures. But bad reactions are very rare.