A Personal Reflection on Vaccines and Public Health

I still remember vividly those days when my siblings and I would hide behind the curtains or in the toilet because we didn’t want to be vaccinated. Not that we really understood the purpose of the injection, except for the little encouragement from our mum that it would keep us from being sick. But that was not enough explanation to pierce us with needles. So we hid whenever we saw the unwanted sci-fi visitors.

As I grew up, I realised the importance of those infrequent visits from the healthcare practitioners. It was for our own good. I can still remember how emotional I felt when one of my close friends in secondary school got measles. It started as small rashes, and I offered her my muji powder. It was supposed to help, but instead, it got worse with each passing day, then it was accompanied by a serious fever. The nurses later told us she had measles and that it’s highly communicable, and before we knew it, three of my roommates fell ill with the same disease. They were immediately isolated from the rest of us. I was surprised at how I didn’t get it despite how close I was to her. I was later told it’s because I was vaccinated from a tender age. The rest didn’t get it either because they were vaccinated or had a previous encounter with the virus, which made them immune to it.

This friend of mine didn’t get vaccinated because her family doesn’t believe in it. Looking at it now, I’m not shocked because many people, especially in rural areas, are still suspicious about vaccination. They see it as something devilish or a way through which the government wants to have control of their body and system. These idiosyncrasies could also be seen during the COVID-19 vaccination. Even when the virus claimed many lives, people were still very suspicious of the vaccines and avoided participating in it.
However, I understand their fears, as it’s not easy to let someone inject you with some liquid you’re totally unaware of. So the right approach is mass sensitisation, which the government, through healthcare providers, has been working on.

"A vaccine is a suspension of weakened, killed, or fragmented microorganisms or toxins or other biological preparation, such as those consisting of antibodies, lymphocytes, or mRNA, that is administered primarily to prevent disease."
Source

In simple terms, vaccines are made from weakened or inactive parts of a virus and are given to people to help prevent future infections. This means vaccines are not used to cure an individual who is already sick but to train the body to recognize and fight off the real virus or related viruses upon future encounter. That is to say, the agents in vaccines help the immune system respond quickly and stop the infection from spreading. As a result, a vaccinated person has a very high chance, about 90%, of not getting infected by the virus he/she was vaccinated against.

The first vaccine that was produced was to fight smallpox, a deadly virus that claimed millions of lives around the world. After that, many other vaccines were produced to fight diseases like measles, polio, whooping cough, tetanus, etc. These are childhood diseases, and in my country, the government has made these vaccinations free of charge. It is now left to the parents to make sure all their children get vaccinated against these diseases. Other common vaccine-preventable diseases include influenza, COVID-19, hepatitis B, smallpox, and yellow fever. Most of these are known to be very dangerous to adults whose immune systems have weakened with age.

A few years ago, we had the COVID-19 pandemic that claimed millions of lives around the globe. In response, healthcare providers worked hard to produce vaccines that could help prevent individuals from getting infected by the virus. These helped a long way, as the number of deaths was greatly reduced to a bare minimum. Nevertheless, there are people who are still suspicious of the vaccines due to certain myths and the fear of developing complications that could result in death. The latter was almost confirmed in my neighbourhood, where a certain young man died two days after getting the COVID-19 vaccine. News from his family had it that he was already sick with the symptoms. So it became very confusing to people whether he was killed by the vaccine or the disease itself. However, there are a great number of people who have gotten the vaccine, including my family, and we have had no issues related to it. That is to say, the vaccine is completely safe if all the protocols are observed carefully. And I would say getting vaccinated is necessary to avoid future infection, as the virus is yet to be completely erased.
In the end, whether one chooses to get vaccinated or not says more about trust than science. So a lot of enlightenment is necessary, especially for those in rural areas and others who have been wrongly informed by neighbours, religion, etc. This is because they are not just putting themselves at risk but every other person in society.
Also, it is important to know that a vaccinated person is not completely safe from getting infected. So it is advisable to keep a distance from a person with a highly communicable disease and observe other protective protocols such as using face masks, proper handwashing, and using alcohol-based sanitisers whenever the need arises.