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To Vaccinate: Why, Whom, and When?

المؤلف:  Barry Chess

المصدر:  Talaros Foundations In Microbiology Basic Principles 2024

الجزء والصفحة:  12th E , P 508

2026-10-10

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Vaccination confers long-lasting, sometimes lifetime, protection in the individual, but an equally important effect is to protect public health. Vaccination is a proven method of establishing herd immunity in the population. According to this concept, individuals immune to a communicable infectious disease will not harbor it, thus reducing the occurrence of that pathogen. With a larger number of immune individuals in a population (herd), it will be less likely that an unimmunized member of the population will encounter the agent and become infected. In effect, collective immunity through mass immunization confers indirect protection on the non immune members (such as infants too young to be vaccinated). Herd immunity maintained through immunization is considered a valuable factor in preventing epidemics.

To encourage vaccination, those in volved in our health care—whether doctors, politicians, or representatives of the pharmaceutical industry—have attempted to make the process as easy as possible. Most routine vaccines can be obtained at pharmacies, and vaccines have been combined in many cases. These combination vaccines, such as the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine are simply mixtures of anti gens from several pathogens given in the same injection. This reduces the number of shots for an anxious 4-year-old, along with the number of doctor visits for mom or dad that must be squeezed into the daily schedule. It is common for several vaccines to be given simultaneously, as occurs in military recruits who receive as many as 15 injections within a few minutes and children who receive boosters for DTaP and polio at the same time they receive the MMR vaccine. Experts doubt that immune interference (inhibition of one immune response by another) is a significant problem in these instances. The main problem with simultaneous administration is that side effects can be amplified.