The Essay On Immunization And Vaccination Highlights Their Importance In Disease Prevention.

The Process of Immunization and Vaccination

Question:

Discuss the risks and benefits.Three issue essay first opposing argument and then refutation for three issues.Introduction and conclusion should be included.
 

Immunization is the process of making a person immune to infectious diseases by the administration of a vaccine in the human body.  Vaccination is the introduction of antigenic material like the vaccine in the human body to stimulate person's immune system and develop adaptive immunity to the particular pathogen. When the immune system is exposed to foreign body or antigen, an immune response is generated by the activation of antibody. In a case of the subsequent encounter of antigen, antibody responds faster due to a development of immunological memory. This method of controlled exposure to immunogen helps in the development of active immunization. The vaccination program has managed to reduce the burden of chronic disease in the world. Therefore, the importance of immunization is realized in the protection of people from deadly disease. 

Despite the significant role of vaccination and vaccination in disease prevention, there is a particular risk of the process too. So the efficacy of administering vaccines becomes doubtful under such circumstances. Here we discuss those risk and give valid issues that go against the view of the usefulness of immunization and vaccination. These risks are as follows:

Chance of other complication in the human body: Each vaccine is associated with particular danger in the human body. For example adenovirus vaccine causes mild side-effect like a headache, abdominal pain, cough, fever, etc. A few severe effects that are found in only 1 in 100 person includes pneumonia, inflammation, and blood in the urine. This is one example of side effects of Adenovirus vaccine intake. Like this, there is numerous risk associated with other vaccines (Marciano et al. 2014). Every vaccine now recommended by government official and medical research team has a certain amount of risk with it. There may be complications like brain inflammation leading to damage of the brain and immune system, dysfunction of the nervous system, chronic arthritis and even death (particularly in smallpox, measles, and polio vaccine) (Håberg et al., 2013).

Different susceptibility level of individuals to vaccine response: The prediction of susceptibility becomes difficult due to different individuals different level of response to the vaccine. Much research on epidemiology has shown that many people experience adverse response to vaccine mainly due to pre-existing susceptibility in the individual. This can exist because of some reasons. It may be due genetic variability, environmental exposure, lifestyle, continuous illness, etc. Certain reactions are unique to particular vaccines only while some may not be so. The existing susceptibility is sometimes identified before administration of vaccine but often it is not revealed leading to more dangerous consequences (Patel, 2013).

Lack of knowledge about individual risk: There is still a gap in knowledge about high-risk factors, and it has not yet been identified by medical science. Children are biologically at more risk of vaccine injury as their immune system is not properly developed. The knowledge about adverse reaction to the vaccine in children is low among many medical staffs. It creates a high amount of uncertainty in the outcome or benefit of the vaccine. Although each new vaccine is properly evaluated according to administration schedule but still the frequency and age of administration of vaccine has been examined in a systematic way. It leads to many types of disorders in children like asthma, autism, seizures, epilepsy, learning disorders, etc. Many people don’t take proper dosage of vaccines leading to remission of disease (Takahashi et al., 2015).

Risks Associated with Vaccines

The above section was an argument against the usefulness of vaccination in preventing disease. In support of the debate, the discussion above showed that vaccine are meant to prevent disease, but its risk factors lead to life-threatening condition for people. So here the efficacy of vaccine administration was questioned. But this section is a rebuttal to the above statement. It will present counter arguments which will prove that vaccination is indeed an excellent procedure to reduce the burden of diseases. As far as risk is considered, any medicine is associated with risk. But that does not mean that people will stop taking those medications. The risk is mentioned because it has the likelihood of occurring in very rarest of rare cases. Similarly, severe side-effects of vaccination are very rare (CA, 2014). 

It is good to think about the risk of immunization when people hardly realize the numerous benefits associated with it. This happens mostly because any common man can never predict how many times their child was exposed to infectious diseases and how vaccines played a role in inducing immunity against those diseases to the child. So there are various data which can prove that vaccine saves lives, and it does not endanger lives (Zipursky, 2014). Immunization has been considered as one of the greatest public health achievement in history, and many medical experts agree that it has managed to reduce the number of deaths to a considerable extent. In one year vaccine has prevented hospitalization of more than 8500 children in Colorado, reduces 30000 deaths in the US and about 3 million deaths worldwide. This drop in death cases has occurred due to immunization and no other means. Therefore, vaccines dosage should take on time and not left midway. This will help in individual safety as well as prevention of an outbreak of disease among a large population (Patel et al., 2013).

Vaccination is not dependent on personal choice. One vaccination not just benefits the person taking vaccine but also the community as a whole. Therefore, purpose of immunization community is to help protect those who are not vaccinated. This concept is known as community immunity. Vaccination of one person helps in the prevention of disease to others in the society such as small babies, unvaccinated peoples, pregnant women, a person with the weak immune system such as those with asthma, cancer, etc (Carlin, 2013).

Therefore, when a majority of the population in a community is immunized, it creates a positive environment from where there is little chance of infectious diseases to spread. Regarding successful vaccination, US occupies the top position. Only 3% of children in the US are unvaccinated. Another usefulness of vaccine is that it does not just save lives, but it saves peoples money too (Bijl et al., 2012).. This can be imagined by the cost involved in treating any disease. But if we judge properly, the cost of disease prevention is much small. So little money spent in immunizations saves people from enormous expenditure due to the diagnosis of illness and hospitalizations. Vaccines are not safe is also just a myth which has been spread by traditional people. Before the administration of any vaccine publicly, it is regularly checked for safety. The safety test is approved by Food and Drug Administration, and its efficacy is routinely monitored. There are published numerous studies which show that there is no significant safety concern related to adherence to immunization schedule and timing of dosage (Levy & Levy, 2015).

Therefore, all these counter arguments with valid points successfully prove that vaccination and immunization is a boon for humanity. The risk of infection to disease is far greater than the risk from immunization. So any person against vaccination should keep this in mind that not going for vaccination is a far greater risk to their health. If a parent wants the safety and well-being of their children, then vaccination is critical. It cannot be ignored in any way. It protects children from major complications like convulsion, hearing loss and death. Vaccination is safe, and it plays a role in preventing the outbreak of diseases. Lack of vaccination in one person creates the risk of infection to those with weakened immune response. Therefore, if all become responsible and realize the importance of immunization in preventing the disease, then whole society will benefit in the long run.  

Reference

Bijl, M., Agmon-Levin, N., Dayer, J. M., Israeli, E., Gatto, M., & Shoenfeld, Y. (2012). Vaccination of patients with auto-immune inflammatory rheumatic diseases requires careful benefit-risk assessment. Autoimmunity reviews,11(8), 572-576.

CA, R. V. (2014). BENEFITS FROM IMMUNIZATION DURNG THE VACCINES FOR CHILDREN PROGRAM ERA--UNITED STATES, 1994-2013. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 63(16), 352-355.

Carlin, J. B., Macartney, K. K., Lee, K. J., Quinn, H. E., Buttery, J., Lopert, R., ... & McIntyre, P. B. (2013). Intussusception risk and disease prevention associated with rotavirus vaccines in Australia's National Immunization Program. Clinical infectious diseases, cit520.

Håberg, S. E., Trogstad, L., Gunnes, N., Wilcox, A. J., Gjessing, H. K., Samuelsen, S. O., ... & Madsen, S. (2013). Risk of fetal death after pandemic influenza virus infection or vaccination. New England Journal of Medicine, 368(4), 333-340.

Levy, O., & Levy, O. (2015). Ready to benefit from training: heterologous effects of early life immunization. Transactions of The Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 109(1), 3-4.

Marciano, B. E., Huang, C. Y., Joshi, G., Rezaei, N., Carvalho, B. C., Allwood, Z., ... & Espinosa-Rosales, F. (2014). BCG vaccination in patients with severe combined immunodeficiency: complications, risks, and vaccination policies. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 133(4), 1134-1141.

Patel, M. M., Widdowson, M. A., Glass, R. I., Akazawa, K., Vinjé, J., & Parashar, U. D. (2013). Source. Emerg Infect Dis, 14(8), 1224-1231.

Patel, M. M., Widdowson, M. A., Glass, R. I., Akazawa, K., Vinjé, J., & Parashar, U. D. (2013). Source. Emerg Infect Dis, 14(8), 1224-1231.

Takahashi, S., Metcalf, C. J. E., Ferrari, M. J., Moss, W. J., Truelove, S. A., Tatem, A. J., ... & Lessler, J. (2015). Reduced vaccination and the risk of measles and other childhood infections post-Ebola. Science, 347(6227), 1240-1242.

Zipursky, S., Djingarey, M. H., Lodjo, J. C., Olodo, L., Tiendrebeogo, S., & Ronveaux, O. (2014). Benefits of using vaccines out of the cold chain: delivering meningitis A vaccine in a controlled temperature chain during the mass immunization campaign in Benin. Vaccine, 32(13), 1431-1435.