The History of Vaccination; in Turkey and in the World

The aristocrats in ancient Greek did not have to do their military service. They were immune from military service. Immunity is defined as resistance to a certain infectious agent and the state of not being infected or ill with this agent. Even though humans can have an acquired immunity against some illnesses such as measles, varicella, etc, they can also obtain active immunity by vaccination. This practice can help to prevent severe and /or fatal complications.Edward Jenner first developed the variola vaccine using scientific methods in 1778. As a result of the well- planned global-scale vaccine campaigns of the World Health Organization(WHO), variola disease was successfully eradicated worldwide in 1977.The success of the variola vaccination carried out by WHO was followed by the poliomyelitis vaccination campaign. WHO started a global poliomyelitis eradication program in 1988. The last poliomyelitis case was seen in A r in November of 1998, and after this case, poliomyelitis was eradicated in Europe, of which Turkey is part. Measles is the next infection to be dealt with, and The Ministry of Health in Turkey is planning to eradicate measles by 2010. It seems that after the success of previous campaigns, plans for other preventable childhood diseases (such as diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, hepatitis A and B, and varicella) probably follow in the future.