Back to basics with Vaccines.gov

May 6th, 2011 10:26 AM UTC
By Malaka Gharib

Now that we’re a few weeks into our vaccines campaign, I thought it would be appropriate to turn the dial back a few notches and go over a few basic facts and figures about this life-saving health intervention. I know it’s not exactly the sexiest topic in the world, but I just want to make sure you’re armed with the information you need to be a great advocate for child vaccines.

That’s where Vaccines.gov comes in. The website, fueled with information from federal US agencies like the CDC and the FDA, provides basic information about all things vaccine-related. Although the site is more about domestic vaccines, it has some great facts about our immune system, the spread of disease and how vaccines actually work.

Here’s a few facts from the site that I found interesting:

Vaccines work really well. No medicine is perfect, of course, but most childhood vaccines produce immunity about 90 to 100 percent of the time.

Vaccines consist of killed or modified microbes, parts of microbes, or microbial DNA that trick the body into thinking an infection has occurred.

A vaccinated person’s immune system attacks the harmless vaccine and prepares for invasions against the kind of microbe the vaccine contained. In this way, the person becomes immunized against the microbe.

Infants are born with weak immune responses but are protected for the first few months of life by antibodies they receive from their mothers before birth.

When a critical portion of a community is immunized against a contagious disease, most members of the community are protected against that disease because there is little opportunity for an outbreak.

Go to Vaccines.gov and take a look around. If you’re feeling extra activist-y, leave an interesting fact from your findings in the comment section below. And if you’re craving more vaccines information, check out Do Something’s “11 facts about vaccines” blog post.

TAGS: ONE, Power of Vaccines