We're lucky to live in world where vaccinations prevent so much suffering and misery writes Sefton Public Health Director
As the world marked World Polio Day yesterday, just a few days from the birthdate of Jonas Salk, who developed the first polio vaccine, Margaret Jones who is Sefton COuncil's Director of Public Health reflected on the importance of vaccinations and the huge benefits they have provided.
She wrote:
As Sefton Council’s Director of Health, I am reminded daily just how lucky we are to live in a world where vaccinations prevent so much suffering and misery from serious illnesses that affected people in living memory.
Measles, mumps, rubella, polio, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and hepatitis are just some of the vaccinations now provided routinely to young people through the NHS. So successfully, in fact, that many younger people are unlikely to have heard of some of them.
Suffering and misery
However, as someone who has worked in the NHS and local council, I know all about these diseases and the suffering and misery they can cause and did cause before people were protected from them.
More recently, we have seen the introduction of annual jabs to prevent people from catching ‘flu, a virus that can make us feel very ill and which for some, can have even worse effects.
As a result, most of us, while we have the occasional bad cold, thankfully won’t have suffered from actual flu. And those of us who have, will certainly remember the fever, aches pains and fatigue that goes with it.
And of course, the past two and a half years of my life, like everyone else’s, have been dominated by COVID-19, a virus that seemed to come out of nowhere, but which became a global pandemic in no time.
Liberated by vaccines
When I look back to those early days of COVID, when the country was in lockdown and the frequent sirens of ambulances were all that seemed to break the enveloping silence, when hospitals were full of seriously ill people, many of them on ventilators and in induced comas, when we couldn’t be with our friends and neighbours even at times of celebration or grief, I can only be thankful that we were eventually liberated from that situation – by vaccines.
It was vaccines, developed by scientists and manufactured in record times and rolled out to so many quickly by the NHS, which gave and are still giving us the protection from COVID.
It was vaccines that have enabled most of us to get back to lives that are relatively normal, although I think forever changed.
It is vaccines that mean for most of us, catching COVID makes us a bit unwell but no longer puts us at risk of hospitalisation, although there are some concerns about the long-term effects of contracting the virus for some.
Ongoing roll outs
And it will be vaccines, in ongoing roll outs and top-up doses, that will continue to protect us from COVID, which look likely to stick around, in the same way that is already happening so successfully with flu and those nasty childhood illnesses that we rarely see any more.
So I thank Jonas Salk and the developers of all the other viruses from which we’re protected today. And all those other scientists who are working right now, to find new preventions and cures that can improve all our lives.
And I will also be pressing on with my work as the Council’s Director of Public Health, which means encouraging everyone who lives and works in Sefton or who visits the Borough to ensure they are fully vaccinated, against flu and COVID 19.
People can find out more and book COVID vaccinations, by calling 119 or visit www.nhs.uk/coronavirus.
The flu jab can be given at GP surgeries and participating pharmacies. To book a flu jab through a participating pharmacy, people can visit the NHS website at: www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/book-flu-vaccination.