Q.What are the uses of vaccine?
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →Vaccines stimulate the body's own immune system to develop long-lasting active immunity against a specific pathogen, protecting individuals before infection occurs; they are used in mass immunization programmes to pre...
Vaccination trains the immune system in advance, preventing infectious diseases and, at a population level, enabling disease control or eradication.
A vaccine contains a weakened, killed, or inactivated pathogen, or a harmless component/antigen derived from it, which when administered stimulates the recipient's own immune system to produce specific antibodies and generate long-lived memory cells, without causing the actual disease. The principal uses of vaccines are: (1) providing individual protection by preparing the immune system to mount a rapid, effective response if the real pathogen is later encountered, thereby preventing or greatly reducing the severity of the disease; (2) enabling mass immunization programmes that protect entire populations, reducing the incidence of infectious diseases and, through herd immunity, even helping to control or completely eradicate certain diseases (as achieved with smallpox, and nearly achieved with polio); (3) reducing overall morbidity, mortality and the economic/healthcare burden associated with outbreaks of infectious disease; and (4) some vaccines have additional preventive roles, such as the HPV vaccine, which protects against infection b …
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