vaccination

• vaccination protects from future infections
• when you are infected with a new pathogen, it takes your white blood cells a few days to learn how to deal with it - but by that time, you can pretty ill
• vaccination involves injecting small amounts of dead or weakened pathogens
• vaccines carry antigens, which cause your body to produce antibodies to attack them - even though the pathogen is harmless
• if live pathogens of the same type appear after the vaccine, the white blood cells can rapidly mass produce antibodies to kill off the pathogen
• pros of vaccination:

  • they have helped control lots of communicable diseases that were once common in the UK
  • big outbreaks can be prevented if a large percentage of the population is vaccinated, that way even people who aren't vaccinated are unlikely to catch the disease - this is herd immunity
• cons of vaccination:

  • vaccines don't always always work - sometimes they don't give you immunity
  • you can sometimes have a bad reaction to a vaccine e.g. swelling, fever, or seizures