History
Mass Vaccination
Mass vaccination refers to the widespread administration of vaccines to a large population, aiming to achieve immunity against a particular disease. This approach has been historically significant in controlling and eradicating infectious diseases such as smallpox, polio, and measles. Mass vaccination campaigns have played a crucial role in public health efforts and have contributed to the prevention of widespread outbreaks.
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4 Key excerpts on "Mass Vaccination"
eBook - PDFTruth, Lies, and Public Health
How We Are Affected When Science and Politics Collide
- Madelon L. Finkel(Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Praeger(Publisher)
The eradication of smallpox worldwide is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular public health initiatives of all time. Vaccination not only protects an individual from disease, but it also has the dual role of protecting the community at large from disease outbreaks. For dis- ease to spread there must be a pool of susceptible people in whom the bacteria or virus can grow. Ironically, those who elect not to vaccinate themselves or their children are actually benefiting from those who are vaccinated. This con- cept is referred to as “herd immunity.” When a disease spreads from one human to another, it requires both an infected person to spread it and a suscep- tible person to catch it. Herd immunity works by decreasing the number of sus- ceptible individuals, and when this number drops low enough, the disease will disappear from the community because there are not enough people to continue the catch-and-infect cycle. The greater the proportion of vaccinated individuals, the more rapidly the disease will disappear. Once-common diseases such as pertussis, polio, smallpox, and measles have all but disappeared thanks to the large numbers of individuals who are vaccinated against these diseases. Peri- odically, however, there have been mini-outbreaks of disease for which there are vaccinations. For example, there continue to be outbreaks of measles (a particularly contagious, potentially serious disease) in the United States as well as around the world, primarily as a result of a pool of unvaccinated children. Those who are not vaccinated are at high risk of contracting this disease. 3 Because microbes know no foreign boundary, diseases in one part of the world can quickly and easily spread to other parts of the globe. As such, a uni- fied global vaccination policy is needed; how to achieve such a noble and important goal, however, is often not easily accomplished. Economics, politics, and social constraints can and do play important roles in disease-eradication programs.
eBook - PDF- Myrone M. Levine, Myron M. Levine, Gordon Dougan, Michael F. Good, Margaret A. Liu, Gary J. Nabel, James P. Nataro, Rino Rappuoli, Myrone M. Levine, Myron M. Levine, Gordon Dougan, Michael F. Good, Gary J. Nabel, James P. Nataro, Rino Rappuoli, Myrone M. Levine, Myron M. Levine, Gordon Dougan, Michael F. Good, Gary J. Nabel, James P. Nataro, Rino Rappuoli(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
1 Vaccines and Vaccination in Historical Perspective Myron M. Levine Center for Vaccine Development, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. Rosanna Lagos Centro para Vacunas en Desarrollo-Chile, Hospital de Nin ~ os Roberto del Rio, Servicio de Salud Metropolitano Norte, Area Norte, Santiago, Chile Jose ´ Esparza Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. INTRODUCTION The history of immunization, from earliest attempts to modem genetically engineered vaccine candidates, represents a long road marked with many milestones. Extensive historical reviews document many of these cardinal achievements (1–4). A few of the most pivotal milestones are mentioned briefly in this chapter, such as variolation, Jenner’s experiments of inoc-ulating subjects with cowpox to prevent smallpox, and the earliest live and inactivated bacterial and viral vaccines and toxoids. On the other hand, the main purpose of this chapter is to emphasize historical accounts of several aspects of vaccinol-ogy that are not generally well described. These include some early attempts at eliciting local immunity by means of oral vaccines, attempts over the centuries at grappling with the problem of how to assess the safety and efficacy of candidate vaccines before their widespread use, and the evolution of controlled field trial methodology. THE DAWN OF IMMUNOPROPHYLAXIS The first attempts to prevent an infectious disease by means of immunoprophylaxis involved the process of ‘‘inoculation of the smallpox’’ or ‘‘variolation,’’ wherein the contents of smallpox vesicles, pustules, or scabs were used to inoculate individuals who had not previously experienced the disease (4). Records of this procedure date to about AD 1000 in China (4). Scabs from mildly affected smallpox patients were stored for approximate-ly one month (longer in winter), ground up in a ratio of 4:1 with the plant Uvularia grandiflora , and then inoculated intranasally.
eBook - PDFVaccines as Technology
Innovation, Barriers, and the Public Health
- Ana Santos Rutschman(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
From this unified perspective – one that regards vaccines as technological construc- tions devised with the purpose of priming the human body to better respond to potential attacks from pathogens – vaccines are widely considered as one of the greatest develop- ments in the history of public health. As is the case with other pharmaceutical products, they also present inherent risks, which vaccine development and regulation have progressively sought to address and, wherever possible, minimize. Chapter 2 integrates the discussion of these risks into its surveys of the regulatory framework for vaccine approval. Section 1.2 now underscores the benefits that have long been recognized in connection with the use of vaccines – which, as the COVID- 19 pandemic has high- lighted, exceed the domain of public health and intersect with socioeconomic concerns at the community, national, and international levels. 1.2 benefits of vaccination 1.2.1 Public Health Value of Vaccination Vaccines have long been recognized as one of the most cost-effective tools in public health to prevent, manage, and mitigate the spread of infectious diseases. 30 The 29 Madeline Drexler, “Prevention and Treatment: Vaccines,” in What You Need to Know About Infectious Disease (US National Academies of Science, 2011), 1–44. 30 See e.g. Walter A. Orenstein & Rafi Ahmed, “Simply Put: Vaccination Saves Lives” (2017) 114 PNAS 4031–33. 18 Vaccines as Instruments of Public Health development and administration of numerous new vaccines throughout the twenti- eth century have drastically reduced infection and disease rates, and in some cases contributed decisively to the eradication or quasi-eradication of disease. Consider the following examples. A tetanus vaccine was introduced in the United States in 1938 and combined in the 1940s with vaccines against diphtheria and pertussis (whooping cough). 31 Broad administration of these vaccines has helped bring infection rates to extremely low levels.
eBook - PDFImperial Hygiene
A Critical History of Colonialism, Nationalism and Public Health
- A. Bashford(Author)
- 2003(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
But the prevention of smallpox was curious and in many ways atypical when viewed within this longstanding mode of prevention. Vaccination, by the late nineteenth century the primary preventive measure against smallpox, did not break the circulation of contagious matter in the classic mode of the cordon sanitaire. Far from separating out clean and dirty, vaccination rather involved the deliber- ate introduction of a diseased foreign body – cowpox lymph or dried crusts – into the individual and sometimes into hitherto uninfected ‘virgin’ populations. Thus in the history of the management of contact, and of the imagination and implementation of lines of hygiene between clean and unclean, vaccination offers immediate and intriguing complications. Vaccination crossed and dissolved the boundary between the clean and the diseased in an altogether different logic to segregation and quarantine. Moreover, in the colonial context, the ‘foreign-ness’ of these foreign bodies was not only a biological ref- erence but often a racial reference, as ‘lymph’ (as the vaccine matter was called) circulated through many populations of children, literally linking them across the globe. Vaccination has been comprehended and represented (in epidemiol- ogy, in medical history, in contemporary commentary) as being about movement, travel, contact and the circulation of infected bodies as well as vaccine matter and know-how from one part of the globe to another, from ‘east’ to ‘west’ and back again. 10 I explore some of these connections and circulations, drawing attention to the geographical and temporal tracing – the genealogical imperative – which charac- terised the procedure of vaccination over the nineteenth century, and into the twentieth. While there is an enormous literature on vaccina- tion (and inoculation) I analyse it as not only contemporaneous with, but also as effected through and affected by, nineteenth-century colonialism.
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