ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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Vaccination is the administration of an antigenic agent, the vaccine, to stimulate the immune system of a living organism in order to develop adaptive immunity against an infectious agent. The active substance of a vaccine is an antigen whose carrier pathogenicity is attenuated to stimulate the body's natural defences (its immune system). The primary immune reaction allows in parallel a memory of the antigen presented so that in the future, when true contamination occurs, the acquired immunity can activate more quickly and more strongly.

Vaccination is carried out on a healthy individual either by subcutaneous or intramuscular injection or by oral injection, according to generally regulated practices. In general, each vaccination act is documented (e.g. in a vaccination book).

The World Health Organization believes that immunization is one of the most effective and cost-effective health interventions. It has resulted in the eradication of smallpox, the reduction of the global incidence of poliomyelitis by 99 per cent to date and a dramatic reduction in morbidity, disability and mortality due to diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, tuberculosis and measles. For 2003 alone, health authorities estimate that vaccination has prevented more than two million deaths.

History

Empirical methods of variolation emerged early in the history of humanity, thanks to the observation that a person who survives the disease is spared in the following epidemics. The idea of preventing evil by evil is embodied in popular practices on Asian and African continents. The practice of inoculation had in any case been known in Africa for centuries and it was from his slave Onesimus that the American pastor Cotton Mather learned. The first indisputable mention of smallpox appears in China at . It was a question of inoculating a form that was not expected to be virulent in smallpox by putting the person in contact with the contents of the substance that suppurates the vesicles of a patient (pus). However, the risk was not negligible: the mortality rate could reach 1 or 2 per cent. The practice gradually spread along the Silk Road. It was imported from Constantinople to the West at the beginning of the grace of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. In 1734 Voltaire devoted to him his philosophical letter, "Sur la petite vorole", where he named it inoculation, assigning it a Circassian origin and specifying that it was also practiced in England: In 1760 Daniel Bernoulli demonstrated that, despite the risks, the generalization of this practice would make it possible to gain a little more than three years of life expectancy at birth. The practice of inoculation of smallpox has generated much debate in France and elsewhere.

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