Vaccination

What is a vaccine?

A vaccine is a preparation that causes your body to produce antibodies which will make you immune to a disease.

Antibodies? Immune? Maybe you don't know what these words mean. Well, it's easy. An antibody is a defensive substance created by the body when it comes across cells from a different body, and to be immune means to be free of something, to succeed in not letting it affect you.

To be vaccinated means "to take precautions" against a disease; in other words, to prepare our body so that it can stand up to infectious disease and overcome the viruses and bacteria that cause it.

Vaccines are made from germs that can cause the disease, and their job is to get our body's natural defences working to protect us against the infection.

It's as if you were training your body to always be on the alert against a particular disease.