Question

How did the discovery of vaccines impact health status?

Answer 1

Ans) Prevention of a substantial proportion of liver and cervical cancers should be achievable by ensuring universal hepatitis B and HPV vaccination, and prevention of some stomach and nasopharyngeal cancers might be possible in communities where there is a high risk of these cancers by vaccination against Helicobacter pylori and Epstein Barr virus infections, respectively. Vaccination to prolong survival from other cancers, as recently demonstrated for prostate cancer, may become practicable, but highly personalized cancer immunotherapy is likely to be too expensive for universal use in even middle-income countries.

- Management of chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension is difficult in communities with limited access to healthcare and it is possible that vaccination against these conditions could help by reducing the need for frequent contacts with the health system, although there is much work to be done before this approach could become a practical reality. Some progress is being made in developing vaccines which modulate the course of diabetes and hypertension.

- Vaccination against addiction, including smoking, is also feasible, although very high antibody concentrations are required to achieve an effect, and there are early results suggesting that vaccination against Alzheimer's disease might slow the progress of this condition. In the coming decades, vaccination is likely to expand its scope beyond prevention of the common infections of childhood which has been its main success so far.