Overview of Vaccies and Vaccination

Some two centuries ago, Edward Jenner introduced the concept of modern vaccination when he successfully used cowpox virus to induce protective immunity to smallpox. The pioneering work of Jenner and his contemporary Louis Pasteur paved the way for the concept of vaccination. The term vaccination (from the Latin vacca – cow) was coined by Pasteur as a lasting tribute to Jenner’s work. The 1970s saw the global eradication of smallpox, the last naturally occurring case being in Somalia in 1977.
Through the efforts of the WHO, other diseases have been targeted for eradication, most notably measles and polio. Like smallpox, these diseases are caused by viruses that only infect humans, thus increasing the odds of eradication. Despite global eradication programmes, however, there are still pockets of infection around the world. The need for effective vaccines and vaccination programmes is brought into sharp focus when considering the fact that over half the human population of the world are infected by one or more pathogens. The scale of malaria infection coupled with the re-emergence of tuberculosis and the increasing incidence of HIV/AIDS is an ever-present reminder of the burden of infectious disease.
Time and space do not permit the inclusion of animal diseases, an issue in its own right, or the attempts to develop vaccines against cancer.

Table . The main types of bacterial and viral vaccines for use in humans

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