Immunizations Across the LifespanProviding a Lifetime of HealthVaccines are widely and routinely administered on the principle that it is better to keep people from getting sick than to treat them once they are sick. Vaccines have saved countless lives, prevented untold illness and, thereby, enriched the health of everyone in our society. The benefits of widespread use of vaccines by the end of the 1900s were so significant in diminishing pain and suffering from vaccine-preventable diseases that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cited vaccination as the number one public health achievement of the 20th century. When we get sick from infection with a virus or bacteria, we often do not get that illness again. Our body’s immune system responds and remembers that specific virus or bacteria and kills it off if we are exposed to it again. Vaccines work in the same way by developing immunity or protection against a specific virus or bacteria that can make us ill. It is important that we, as a society, continue to protect the health of our generation and following generations by using life-saving vaccines. To do that, we must ensure that everyone, young and old, receives all needed immunizations. Immunizations are, and will continue to be, one of the pillars upon which society builds good public health. Did You Know?Vaccines are made with a form of the virus or bacteria that cannot make us sick—like in hepatitis A or varicella (chickenpox). Sometimes a piece of the virus or bacteria is used to develop immunity—like in the meningococcal and pneumococcal vaccines. On occasion, the poisons produced by the bacteria, rather than the bacteria themselves, are the problem. They are more of a threat than the disease itself—tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis vaccines are examples. |
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