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Vaccines, Shots That Protect You

- Marie Neunez, Michel Goldman, Sylvie Goldman, Paul-Henri Lambert and

When your grandparents were your age, many children suffered from measles, a disease affecting unvaccinated children, a disease caused by a virus. Most often, they would heal from it, but sometimes, the disease caused serious complications, involving the lungs or the brain, that could be deadly. Thanks to vaccination, measles nearly disappeared completely. This is also the case for several other childhood illnesses, such as poliomyelitis that caused paralysis of the legs. To date, we count more than 10 infectious diseases that are prevented thanks to vaccines. Unfortunately, not all children have the chance to be vaccinated: either because they live in areas of the world where vaccines are not available or difficult to access, or because their parents are against vaccination.
In certain individuals, long-standing infections can cause cancer. For example, women infected with the human papilloma virus may develop cancer of a part of the uterus, an essential organ for human reproduction. Vaccination is the most efficient way to prevent this cancer from occurring.

License information: nan
MPAA: PG
Go to source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2019.00031

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