Vaccination is the method to prevent infectious diseases in the body. Due to widespread of immunity and vaccination in India and world, worldwide eradication of smallpox has been made possible, along with restriction of diseases (polio, measles and tetanus) from much of the world.
According to World Health Organization (WHO), licensed vaccines are currently available to prevent or contribute to the prevention and control of twenty-five preventable infections.
The vaccination was renamed as immunization because it was derived from a virus affecting cows (Latin: vacca–cow). Though in common speech, vaccination and immunization have a similar meaning. The only thing distinguishes them is inoculation, which uses unweakened live pathogens, although in common usage either can refer to an immunization.
The process of artificial induction of immunity through an effort to protect against infectious disease, involves ‘priming’ of the immune system with an ‘immunogen’. The stimulation of immune responses with an infectious agent is known as immunization.
Smallpox was most probably the first disease on which people tried inoculation and was the first disease for which a vaccine was produced. It was a contagious and deadly disease. The vaccine for small pox was discovered by the British physician Edward Jenner. He was the first one to publish evidence that his principles were effective and to provide advice on its production, though at least six people had used the same principles. Louis Pasteur had further taken the concept through his work in microbiology.
The latest recommended chart for vaccination in India to all the children includes 13 vaccines, with names BCG, HepB, Poliovirus, DTP, Hib, PCV, RV, Typhoid, MMR, Varicella, HepA, Tdap, HPV.
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