With the Coronavirus vaccine being rolled out in full force, it’s important to be clued up on the basic facts before it’s your turn to be vaccinated.

So here’s everything you need to know about vaccines and why they are so important for our health:

Vaccines DO:

  • protect you and your children from serious diseases
  • protect other people in your community
  • undergo rigorous safety testing before being introduced
  • sometimes may cause mild side effects
  • reduce or even get rid of some diseases if enough people are vaccinated

Vaccines DON’T:

  • cause autism
  • overload or weaken the immune system
  • cause allergies or other conditions
  • contain mercury
  • contain any ingredients that cause harm in such small amounts

Why vaccinations are important

Vaccinations prevent up to 3 million deaths worldwide every year and are the most important thing we can do to protect ourselves against ill health.

Since vaccines were introduced in the UK, diseases like smallpox and polio that used to kill millions of people are either gone or rarely ever seen.

However, if people stop taking vaccines, it is possible for infectious diseases to quickly spread again.

How vaccines work

Vaccines teach your immune system how to create antibodies that protect you from diseases.

It’s much safer for your immune system to learn this through vaccinations rather than by catching the diseases and treating them.

Once your immune system knows how to fight off a disease, it can protect you from it for many years.

Herd immunity

Having a vaccine also benefits your community through ‘herd immunity’. If enough people are vaccinated it’s harder for the disease to spread to those who can’t have vaccines.

Why vaccines are safe

All vaccines are thoroughly tested to make sure they won’t harm you, it often takes years for a vaccine to make it through trials and tests to make it pass for approval.

Once a vaccine is being used in the UK, it’s also monitored for any rare side effects.

Side effects of vaccinations

Most side effects of a vaccine are mild and do not last long.

The most common ones are:

  • the area where the needle goes in looking red and feeling swollen for 2 to 3 days.
  • babies or young children developing a high temperature or feeling a bit unwell for 1 to 2 days.

It’s rare for anyone to have a serious allergic reaction to a vaccination however if this does happen it will happen in minutes and the person giving you the vaccine will be trained to deal with these reactions immediately.

What’s in a vaccine?

The main ingredient of any vaccine is a small amount of bacteria, virus or toxin that has been weakened or destroyed in a laboratory first.

This means there is no risk of someone catching a disease from a vaccine.

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