Vaccination and Immunity

• Immunization is the process whereby a person is made immune or resistant to an infectious disease, typically by the administration of a vaccine.
•  Vaccines stimulate the body's own immune system to protect the person against subsequent infection or disease. Hence, Immunization and vaccination can prevent infectious disease.

• A communicable disease is one that is spread from one person to another through a variety of ways that include: contact with blood and bodily fluids; breathing in an airborne virus; or by being bitten by an insect. The most common and serious vaccine-preventable diseases tracked by the World Health Organization (WHO) are diphtheria, Haemophilus influenzae serotype b infection, hepatitis B, measles, meningitis, mumps, pertussis, poliomyelitis, rubella, tetanus, tuberculosis, and yellow fever. Hence, Communicable diseases like whooping cough, measles and polio can be prevented by vaccination. So, the correct answer is 'True'.
  

• Pulse Polio is an immunisation campaign established by the government of India to eliminate poliomyelitis (polio) in India by vaccinating all children under the age of five years against the polio virus. 
• The project fights poliomyelitis through a large-scale, pulse vaccination programme and monitoring for polio cases. 
• Tamil Nadu will hold a pulse polio immunisation camp on March 10 as part of a nationwide campaign. In 2019, Tamil Nadu is stepping into the 15th polio-free year. Hence, Pulse Polio is an example of a vaccination program by the government.

BCG vaccine is provided to an individual to immunize against tuberculosis. It consists of antigenic molecules which invades the immune response.

According to immunity theory, the immune system is programmed to decline its functions over time, and this fact is the main cause of aging. Thymic involution (shrinking of the thymus with age) is believed to be the main age-related change in the immune system, and this alteration begins after puberty.

So, the correct option is ‘Degeneration of thymus’.

Swine flu and polio can be prevented by giving vaccination at the right time. There are many more diseases which can be prevented by vaccines. Therefore, (c) is the correct answer.

The smallpox vaccine is made from the weekend virus called Vaccinia, which is another smallpox-type virus that cannot cause infections. This vaccine helps the body develop immunity to smallpox and thus successfully eradicate smallpox from the human population.

The smallpox vaccine is the only way to prevent smallpox. The vaccine is made from a virus either weakened or attenuated (has lost its ability to cause the disease), which is introduced into the blood. This helps in building the antibodies against the smallpox virus in the body. Smallpox was eradicated by this vaccination program, starting in 1967. 

The methods of administering vaccines is by inoculation, but some are given orally. A vaccine produces immunity to a disease by stimulating the production of antibodies.

Vaccines contain dead or alive but attenuated pathogens or toxoids consisting of microbial components. Vaccines is introduces into the body to stimulate the formation of antibodies by the immune system.

Vaccination is the administration of antigenic material (a vaccine) to stimulate an individual's immune system to develop adaptive immunity to a pathogen. Edward Jenner administered the world’s first vaccination as a preventive treatment for smallpox. He took fluid from a cowpox blister, attenuated the cowpox virus and introduced it into the skin of James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy who is suffering from smallpox. A single blister rose up on the spot, but James soon recovered.

• A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe. The agent stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as a threat, destroy it, and to further recognize and destroy any of the microorganisms associated with that agent that it may encounter in the future.
  
• The terms vaccine and vaccination are derived from smallpox of a cow were introduced by Edward Jenner.
  

The polio vaccine was developed in 1955 by Dr. Jonas Salk and thus called the “Salk vaccine”. It is the inactivated or killed vaccine that was given by intramuscular injection but now it is given orally. The inactivated polio vaccine produces antibodies in the blood to all three types of poliovirus. In the event of infection, these antibodies prevent the spread of the virus to the central nervous system and protect against paralysis. 

• Smallpox vaccine, the first successful vaccine to be developed, was introduced by Edward Jenner in 1796. 
• He followed up his observation that milkmaids who had previously caught cowpox did not later catch smallpox by showing that inoculated cowpox protected against inoculated smallpox. 
• Hence, The first vaccine produced by Edward Jenner was for protection against Smallpox  
• So, the correct answer is 'Smallpox'.