Example Essay on Healthcare: Vaccination
📌Category: | Health, Health Care |
📌Words: | 1120 |
📌Pages: | 5 |
📌Published: | 04 November 2020 |
Should children be getting immunized or not? This is a question frequently asked by the citizens of New Zealand. The debate to immunize or not to immunize is becoming a big issue, take, for example, the measles outbreak. So, are we going to do something now or are we just going to let this issue carry on forever?
Background
The chickenpox vaccine (varicella vaccine), created by Michiaki Takahashi, is a vaccine that fights against the varicella-Zoster virus (chickenpox). The vaccine was first founded in 1970 when Dr. Takahshi flew back from a research fellowship in Housten to Japan so he and by 1972 he was experimenting with the vaccine in clinical trials. Within a few years, Japan and some other countries had begun widespread vaccination programs. But the United States of Americas food and drug administration didn’t approve of the vaccine until 1995.
Is the vaccine important or not?
The Varicella vaccine is very important. After the vaccination, the immune system makes the antibodies and memory cells needed to provide long term protection against the virus. This also helps with protection against shingles. Shingle is a viral infection that causes painful rashes mainly around your torso.
The age that you should be vaccinated is said to be children over the age of one. Two doses are given 4 weeks apart and then you should be vaccinated again at age 4-6. Adults can also get vaccinated. From my experiences, I didn’t get the vaccine until after I got the virus. Even though I had the virus the vaccine is protecting me from any further viruses related to the varicella-Zoster virus.
It’s unfortunate that kids can’t make their own decisions between life and death. With parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids, they don’t know the consequences. Between 2001 and 2011, 26 children were treated in Auckland's Starship hospital in intensive care. Later on, 8 of the kids left disabled, and 4 of the kids died. And this is only in New Zealand.
The side effects that you can get from the vaccine are usually mild. Most common side effects are redness and swelling, and a raised temperature. Less common you could get the chickenpox-like rash, mild cold symptoms, irritability, and itching at the vaccination site. But in about 1 out of 100 people you can have a headache, sore throat, painful joints, throwing up or fainting.
Varicella outbreaks continue to occur in schools where most children are vaccinated. However, there have been fewer outbreaks since the two-dose varicella vaccination in the USA. States are now encouraged to report all outbreaks to CDC quarterly. On the 19th of November, dozens of children came down with the Varicella-Zoster virus at a US school. It was one of the highest exemption states in the world. It was reportedly the biggest outbreak since before the vaccine came out in 1995. 36 students came down with the virus and more than 70 percent of the school's children had the vaccination.
There have been a few improvements with the vaccine. For example chickenpox parties. Chickenpox parties are where children come together and some kids in the group have the VAricella-Zoster virus, this means that the healthy children without the virus will get the virus earlier instead of later on in life, but this didn’t protect them from other viruses that could affect them. Luckily though this method is no longer needed because of the vaccine. The number of cases has also improved before the vaccine there were over 4 million cases per year, but when the vaccine became available there were only 400,000 cases a year, and it is still improving year by year.
Link to Science
What's in it
The Varicella vaccine is made up of many things, but only a small amount. There are two types of vaccines that are used, Varilrix and Varivax.
In the vaccine, there is Highly Purified Gelatine. This is used as a stabilizer but is only in the Varivax, not the Varilrix. Human Serum Albumin. This is a very common protein found in human blood, this is only in the Varilrix, and is also used as a stabilizer. However, by the end of 2019, this will no longer be in the vaccine. In the manufacturing process, these things might have been used. Neomycin, an antibiotic used to stop bacteria from growing and contaminating the vaccine. Harmless salts based on sodium and potassium used as acidity regulators. Growing the active ingredients. The virus strain used in both vaccines is grown in the laboratory by using human cell strains. Compound or Mixture? The Varicella vaccine is a mixture because there are no elements making it a compound. But in the mixture, there is sorbitol, mannitol, lactose or urea, safe organic compounds used as stabilizers.
The structure
The structure of the vaccine is a live but weakened version of the virus, this doesn’t cause the virus it helps the immune system produce antibodies. An antibody, also known as an immunoglobulin, is a large y-shaped protein which is mainly produced by Plasma cells that are used by the immune system to neutralize Pathogens such as pathogenic bacteria and viruses.
The particle structure of the Varicella- Zoster Virus antigen is made up of Glycoprotein spikes, Liquid envelope, Tegument, Nucleocapsid, and double-stranded DNA genome.
Perspectives
So should we vaccinate our kids?
Helen Petousis-Harris (a vaccine expert) believes that vaccination against The Varicella-Zoster virus should be compulsory, this is because, as I previously stated before, between 2001 and 2011, 26 children were treated in Starship Hospital intensive care unit. 8 of the kids left the unit disabled and 4 died. But why do anti-vaxxers think that they know more than scientists?
For example, Local Amy Gordon told the Citizen-Times, “What’s the big deal with chickenpox, there is no big deal, if I were a parent and my kids weren’t vaccinated I would just send them somewhere to get chickenpox”.
Though public opinions about the vaccine varied and deep-seated beliefs, about cultural viewpoints. Religious objections to vaccines are usually based on the ethical dilemmas associated with using human tissue cells to help create the vaccine and beliefs that the body is sacred and it should be healed by God. Another belief is that when you get the vaccination you can get autism, but I emailed Dr. David Hayman and he told me that this belief is not true.
Personally, I think that the vaccine should be compulsory. Based on the information that I have gathered I think that it should be compulsory to vaccinate. The reason I think this is because the consequences that you can get from not being vaccinated, could be very serious, it could end in death, disabilities or shingles. So I think that we should do something now and not sit around waiting for someone else to do something about it.
So what?/What now?
Every day there are arguments about whether we should vaccinate or not, but this is carrying on for too long. So, with the information that I got, I am going to create a website to tell my perspective and to tell others all of the good reasons why we should vaccinate. I want people to know that there are serious consequences and that it’s better to be safe than sorry.