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General Vaccine Summary
Thanks to innovations made in public health and modern medicine, vaccines have been effective at reducing or eliminating many infectious diseases that used to cause devastating sickness in infants, children and adults.
A vaccine is a prepared stimulus (usually an inactive form of the disease) that is used to help the body’s immune system build up protection against infectious diseases. Vaccination is one of the most convenient and safest preventive care measures you can take for yourself and your children.
How do vaccines work?
Vaccines help the body fight illness. When bacteria or viruses get into the body, they can attack healthy cells and multiply. This invasion of bad germs is an infection that causes disease.
Vaccines help the body protect against certain diseases by imitating the infections. Immunizations use very small amounts of antigens to help the immune system recognize diseases and learn to fight them.
Many vaccines are recommended for children during their younger years as preventative care. As people get older, the protection from some vaccines that were given as a child will begin to wear off. You may also be at more risk for diseases due to your job, your environment, your lifestyle or other health conditions. Getting additional recommended vaccines as an adult helps provide continuing protection from diseases that can cause you to become seriously ill or hospitalized.
What are the benefits of vaccines?
Natural illnesses from vaccine-preventable diseases can be deadly or cause serious long-term complications, and vaccines protect against certain diseases by helping the body build immunity to diseases.
While most people do not have serious complications from some illnesses, some people may experience more severe symptoms and serious long-term effects. It’s impossible to predict how any disease will affect an individual person.
Vaccines lower your chance of getting certain diseases, lower your risk of suffering from complications of the disease, and lower your chance of spreading disease to others around you.
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