Receive vacation hours for getting scheduled immunizations including the flu vaccine.
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It is always better to prevent a disease than to treat it after it occurs.
Diseases that used to be common in this country and around the world, including polio, measles, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), rubella, mumps, tetanus, and rotavirus can now be prevented by vaccination. Thanks to a vaccine, one of the most terrible diseases in history - smallpox - no longer exists outside the laboratory! Over the years vaccines have prevented countless cases of disease and saved millions of lives.
Immunity is the body's way of preventing disease. The immune system recognizes germs that enter the body as "foreign invaders" and produces proteins called antibodies to fight them.
The first time a child is infected with a specific antigen, say measles virus, the immune system produces antibodies designed to fight it. This takes time...usually the immune system can't work fast enough to prevent the antigen from causing disease, so the child still gets sick. However, the immune system "remembers" that antigen. If it ever enters the body again, even after many years, the immune system can produce antibodies fast enough to keep it from causing disease a second time. This protection is called immunity.
Wouldn't it be nice if there were a way to give children immunity to a disease without their having to get sick first? Well there is!
Vaccines contain the same antigens that cause diseases. But the antigens in vaccines are either killed, or weakened to the point that they don't cause disease. However, they are strong enough to make the immune system produce antibodies that lead to immunity. In other words, a vaccine is a safer substitute for a child's first exposure to a disease. The child gets protection without having to get sick. Through vaccination, children can develop immunity without suffering from the actual diseases that vaccines prevent.
Visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to review immunization schedules for children and for adults.
article found on www.cdc.gov/vaccines/
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