Question

What is the purpose of vaccination?

Answer 1

Hint: The vaccines are the dead or weakened microbes that are introduced in our body that help in producing antibodies against a particular disease. The act of introducing a vaccine in a person’s body is called vaccination. Vaccination can be done orally or can be injected.

Complete answer:
The immune cells of our body produce antibodies in response to antigens (toxins released by the pathogens). These antibodies are antigen-specific and destroy the antigen. Our body has memory cells that produce antibodies or further infection and do not cause infection. When the antibody fails to neutralise the antigen, infection occurs. These infections can be serious and can even lead to death. In order to prevent the disease, the vaccines are administered as prophylaxis.

The vaccines are the microbial agents which are dead or weakened, live or attenuated. These microbial agents do not cause infection as their virulency has been destroyed but they activate the immune cells to produce antibodies. The vaccines were first developed by Edward Jenner against smallpox.

So, the role of vaccines is to prevent us from getting infected by the disease-causing microbes. It provides acquired immunity to our body. It boosts our immune system without causing us any harm. The vaccines have proved effective against various deadly diseases.

Note: The vaccination process is carried out both orally or via injection. The vaccine may contain live and attenuated microbe, mRNA, dead, weakened or any other conjugate form of microbes. Some important vaccines are vaccines against cholera, smallpox, influenza, chickenpox, polio etc.