Vaccinations-Are they effective? Pres Thurles

Vaccinations- Are they effective?

Introduction How are they made? How they work! The Polio Vaccine The Rubella Vaccine e-mail us

The Tetanus Vaccine The Meningococcal C Vaccine Who should be vaccinated? Side Effects Disadvantages TB & MMR

History & SUMMARY

Edward Jenner, invented the vaccination in 1796 as a preventative measure against smallpox. Jenner experimented in his hometown of Berkely in Gloucestershire. It was believed that dairymaids who caught cowpox could not catch smallpox. Cowpox causes a few sores on the hand, but causes little danger of death or disfigurement. In 1796, Jenner took matter from the hand of Sarah Nelmes, a dairymaid who had caught cowpox. He made two cuts on the arm of a healthy eight-year-old boy, James Phipps, and inserted the disease matter into the boy’s arm. The boy contracted cowpox. Forty-eight days later, Jenner inserted some smallpox matter into the boy’s arm. The smallpox matter had no effect because the boy had been vaccinated with the cowpox matter. Jenner’s experiment was successful. This was the first vaccination ever given.
The BCG is a vaccine used to prevent tuberculosis. The vaccine was developed in 1921 by two French researchers, Albert Calmette and Camille Guerin. At present, scientists in the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in America are researching a new vaccine.
An American researcher, Jonas E Salk, developed the Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV). It contains the three types of inactive polio virus. The IPV is administered by injection. This was the first effective polio vaccination, developed in 1955. The Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) is a live polio vaccine developed by Albert B. Sabin in 1961. The OPV is given orally.
The Meningitis C vaccination has been used in countries such as the USA, UK, Canada and Holland since 1994. The Office for Public Health Gain introduced it into Ireland in September 2000. This vaccine contains the inactivated virus and only prevents the Meningococcal C virus.

In September, our science teacher, Ms Curtis told us about the upcoming Young Scientists Competition and encouraged us to enter. Soon after that, we read a newspaper article in science class about a mother claiming her son had become autistic following a routine MMR vaccination. It was after reading this article that we decided to do our project on "Vaccinations – Are they Effective?" Throughout the last year there has been a lot of controversy in the media about the introduction of the new Meningococcal C vaccination and also about the connection between childhood vaccinations and Autism.

We started researching our project straight away and drafted up our proposal form. We used Encarta 97 Encyclopedia and the internet to find the necessary information. Martina also made a visit to Dr Michael Daly for more information on each of the vaccinations we chose to study. He was very helpful and gave her many leaflets for different vaccines. We used college Microbiology books and Medical Encyclopedias to help us gather enough information about diseases and the vaccinations which prevent them.

We chose to study the following vaccinations in detail:

Polio vaccination (both live oral and inactivated vaccines)
MMR (measles, mumps and rubella vaccination)
3-in-1 (diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus
Hib vaccination (Haemophilus influenza type b)
Pneumococcal vaccination
Meningococcal C vaccination
BCG vaccination (against tuberculosis)

We then started to organise our survey. We decided on eleven questions. These questionnaires were then delivered to each of the four secondary schools in Thurles – the Presentation, the Ursuline, the Christian Brothers School and the Vocational School to first, transition and sixth year students. A few days later we returned to the schools to collect the completed surveys. We then analysed the survey results and noted the side effects suffered by the students. Then, because of the success of the student survey we decided to survey the teachers in our school. On completion of the survey’s results, we listed them in a table and decided to put the following questions on bar charts and pie charts.

Do you agree with vaccinations?
Have you had all your vaccinations? ( 3-in-1, MMR, BCG, Meningitis and Polio)
Do you realise the dangers of vaccinations?

Do you suffer from any side effects of vaccinations?

Would you still support immunisation?

It was interesting to see that while 94% of teachers agreed with vaccinations at the beginning of the survey, 100% would support vaccinations at the end . In the students survey, the percentage of people who would still support immunisation at the end of the questionnaire had dropped from 84% to 80%. This survey played a vital role in discovering whether or not vaccinations are effective.

We found some conclusive evidence for our study, which contained the vaccination uptake rates in Ireland for the years 1999 and 2000. We found that after 350,000 children and young people in Ireland had been vaccinated using the new Meningococcal C vaccine since September 2000, only 143 people suffered adverse reactions to the vaccine. We then came to our conclusion that vaccinations are effective.

Other proof of their effectiveness is the eradication in 1980 of smallpox and the near elimination of polio. In Ireland tuberculosis (TB) was a major cause of death up to the 1940s. In 1947 the health minister, Dr Noel Browne started a TB vaccination campaign and within a few years the death rate from this disease had fallen from 3,500 to 300 cases annually. This proof has helped us to conclude that vaccinations are the most effective and safest way of preventing disease.

Vaccinations are the way forward.