Immunization against contagious diseases

Contagious or infectious diseases undermine the child's health considerably, therefore all measures should be taken to protect the child against infections. Infectious diseases are caused by pathogenic bacteria or other microorganisms that multiply in the body and have a harmful effect on it. These organisms (germs and viruses) are capable of producing poisonous substances, or toxins, that poison the body. Having penetrated into the body the causative agents of a disease do not necessarily cause the disease; the body itself must be susceptible to this disease. Having had some infectious disease people do not usually get it again, or if they do they have it in a very mild form.

The state when the body resists or overcomes infection is called immunity. Immunity is a most complex phenomenon in which various protective reactions of the body participate. There exist both specific and non-specific factors' of resistance.

A well-planned schedule, proper diet, regular walks in the fresh air and inurement of the body to various environmental factors help to strengthen the body resistance to disease.

Prophylactic (preventive) inoculations are also very important for the prevention of infectious diseases. In the 18^th century an English physician Edward Jenner discovered that milkers who were affected with cowpox developed blisters on their fingers and subsequently became immune to human pox — smallpox. In 1796 Jenner publicly inoculated an 8-year-old boy with cowpox, using the fluid from a blister on the finger of a milkmaid. Having been inoculated with cowpox the boy did not contract smallpox because inoculation with cowpox produced immunity to smallpox. Jenner's method Was called vaccination (from vaccinia, the Latin for cowpox).

The introduction into the body of a vaccine became known as preventive inoculation. Inoculation is done either under the skin, on its surface, or through the mouth or nose depending on the specific features of the vaccine. The site of inoculation usually reddens, swells and becomes tender. A slight elevation of temperature is sometimes noted, and some mild general malaise may be felt; however, these symptoms rapidly disappear and the person becomes immune to the disease. Being taken by mouth vaccines usually have no side effects at all.

Preventive inoculations are absolutely harmless and provide complete protection against infectious diseases.

Having been introduced into medical practice the vaccines created immunity against many diseases, including tuberculosis, smallpox, diphtheria, whooping cough, poliomyelitis, typhoid fever, dysentery, cholera, tetanus and typhus.

Influenza virus vaccine for all ages

Industrial production of inactivated split influenza virus vaccine, has been launched at the Mechnikov Research Institute of Vaccines and Sera in Ufa (Bashkiria).

All vaccines protecting the human organism against the invasion of viruses have a serious drawback: it is not safe to innoculate them, for the development of immunity, to people suffering from chronic ailments, and also to children, for this may entail undesirable complications. So it happens that those for whom flu is particularly pernicious remain practically defenceless in the fight with it. It is for them that the new vaccine is, meant. To explain its advantage in comparison with the existing preparations, it will be enough to decipher the notions "inactivated" and "split".

The first means that the virus in the vaccine has been killed. But that is not all. The destroyed pathogene has been split, with only those components isolated from it which are responsible for protection against flu. Due to this, the vaccine has become harmless, while the immunity it produces is no less stable than any other. For the first time it has become possible to vaccinate children beginning approximately from three-year-olds, and people susceptible to chronic diseases of the respiratory organs and the cardiovascular system.

A COMEBACK FOR WHOOPING COUGH

When she was 5 /2 months old, Traci Cohn of Rockville, Md., developed a 104 °F fever and cried inconsolably for three days. Ever since that illness Traci, now 17, has been mentally retarded. Her family and one of her doctors believe that the fever and subsequent mental damage were the direct result of the pertussis, or whooping cough inoculations that she received in the first months of her life.

Whooping cough, named for the distinctive sound made by its victims as they gasp for air between bouts of violent coughing, was until the 1940s a major killer of children. Caused by a bacterial infection that increases the amount of mucus in the lungs, the disease sometimes results in convulsions and death. Over the past four decades, however, pertussis has been largely subdued in developed nations by mass inoculations with a vaccine made from killed pertussis bacteria. Now doctors annually pump ^:some 18

million doses of the vaccine into U.S. children — usually in the form of a D.P.T. shot, so called because it also provides protection against diphtheria and tetanus. Some 40 states require children to have D.P.T. inoculations before they are allowed to enter school.

Despite these efforts, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta reports that the incidence of whooping cough is increasing; the latest figures show that the number of U.S. cases has nearly doubled in the past three years, from 1895 in 1982 to 3275 in 1985. Meanwhile, health officials are concerned that more and more parents, aware. of cases like Traci's, will refuse to allow their youngsters to be inoculated.

Minor reactions to the vaccine, such as redness and swelling, are common. Permanent brain damage, according to one study, occurs only once in about every 300000 inoculations, death even less frequently. Researchers suspect that these severe complica­tions — which can include convulsions, shock, loss of muscle control and fever — are caused by bacterial toxins. Still, most doctors insist that the shots are worth the risks. Martin Smith, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, calculates that the chances of suffering serious damage from whooping cough are ten times .greater than having damaging side effects from the vaccine. Says Dr. Peter Patriarca of the CDC's immunization division: "There is no question that the vaccine has more side effects than any other vaccine. But it's a matter of risk vs. benefits".

However, many parents of children stricken by the vaccine complain that they were unaware of the risk. "Doctors don't sit down with parents and talk about the vaccine", says Washington Attorney Jeff Schwartz, whose daughter Julie died of apparent vaccine-related seizures at age three. "It's shocking to us that this information is not routinely provided". In other nations, fear of the vaccine's potential dangers has had tragic results. After two children died from side effects in 1974 and 1975, Japan banned use of pertussis vaccine for two months. Many parents were so alarmed that even after it was reinstated, they refused to inoculate their children. Between 1977 and 1979, as a result, 28000 Japanese children contracted whooping cough, and 93 died. (By comparison, between 1972 and 1974 Japan reported only 1024 cases and 6 deaths.) In Britain, more than 100000 cases of pertussis and 36 . deaths occurred between 1977 and 1979, after reports about side effects were broadcast on television. A similar epidemic struck in Sweden after the government decided to withdraw the vaccine. Says Swedish Pediatrician Patrick Olin, who is testing an alternative to the still banned shot: "The fact that we have no mass vaccination is the clear reason for the rapid increase".

Hit by a number of liability lawsuits, the pharmaceutical industry is acting defensively. Lederle Laboratories of Wayne, N. J., announced that it is boosting the price per shot of its vaccine to $11.40 (it was only 45 cents in 1982), holding back 8_of that amount for what company calls its "liability reserve".

Meanwhile, researchers are scrambling to purge the vaccine of its harmful effects. In its current form, pertussis vaccine is made by killing pertussis bacteria with heat or chemicals and grinding them up, toxins and all. When the resulting mixture is injected, several of the toxins stimulate an immune response that protects the recipient from attacks by live pertussis bacteria. But some of the toxins in the vaccine apparently cause the side effects as well.

Researchers in Japan have brewed what they hope is a safer vaccine by separating out the most dangerous toxins produced by the bacteria, leaving only four to stimulate the immune response. U.S. scientists at the National Institute of Health and the Public Health Service have gone one step further: they announced that they had determined the genetic code of the bacterial gene that orders production of one of the toxins. They hope to alter the gene so that it signals the production of only the part of the toxin that stimulates the immune response, then to use this partial toxin as an essential ingredient of a safe vaccine.

Until a safer vaccine is available in the U.S., the CDC has advised parents to watch carefully for these symptoms in children receiving D.P.T. shots: 1) severe allergic reaction like a rash or troubled breathing; 2) a fever of 105°F or higher within 48 hours of a shot; 3) the onset of shock, which is characterized by clamminess and a rapid pulse; 4) persistent crying that lasts for three hours or more, or unusual high-pitched cries; 5) seizures, fits or convulsions within three days of a ■ shot; 6) dulling of mental function within seven days of a shot. "If any one of these symptoms occurs", says the CDC's Patriarca, "no further doses of the vaccine should be given", and the child should be taken immediately to a doctor, clinic or hospital.