The hepatitis B vaccination provides for the rest of your life protection against hepatitis B infection. Although many older gay men have been vaccinated, the number vaccinated boys well behind. Precisely for that group is important that they be vaccinated on time, before they come into contact with hepatitis B. Because this group also has an increased risk of hepatitis A, a disease that usually takes less severe, the Public Health Service offers the combination vaccine hepatitis B and A to.

The Wednesday Night Special

The guys who are just, or just not identify as gay are difficult to reach. The GGD has therefore examined how they could best reach this group. The result is The Wednesday Night Special, as a party is announced. The Public Health Service invites the boys to the special walk-in office hours and appointment to visit. Every Wednesday between 17 and 20.30 hours, the passengers of the Public Health Service outpatient arranged as a special lounge. On these evenings are guys who (also) in boys are welcome to an alcoholic cocktail on their health. The cocktail is symbolic of the “cocktail vaccination” against hepatitis A and B they receive free and anonymous (worth € 211, -).

The hepatitis B vaccination is also free for all men who have sex with men. For those who do not live in Amsterdam: from the BA site MAN.NL is possible to order an appointment with a GGD in the region to make their own.

Rotavirus

Vaccination programs against Rotavirus begin to bear fruit. The vaccinations may in the longer term the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children are prevented, is in a new report.

“It is not generally known that pneumonia and diarrhea world’s two biggest killers of children and that it is possible to vaccinate against the main causes of these diseases,” said Mickey Chopra of the United Nations Children UNICEF.

Wednesday published the New England Journal of Medicine a report on the positive effects of vaccination against Rotavirus in Africa and Mexico.

“The Rotavirus is the leading cause of severe gastroenteritis among children worldwide,” according to the report. Children run the virus mainly by lack of clean drinking water and adequate sanitation.
Appearance

Prevention is the best protection against infant mortality caused by Rotavirus infection, say the authors. But the vaccine also ensured that the number of cases of severe gastro-darmonstekingen among children less than one years in Malawi and South Africa significantly reduced.

Children in African countries are often disproportionately affected by Rotavirus. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that every year 527,000 children die from infection with the virus. 230,000 of those deaths are in Africa south of Sahara. Of the seven countries with highest child mortality caused by Rotavirus, six are in Africa.

The vaccines against Rotavirus, according to experts from 225,000 to 325,000 children annually save lives. A vaccine against pneumococcal 265,000 to 400,000 annually would save lives.

Definition:
A vaccine is a drug consisting of all or part of an infectious agent. The infectious agent may be bacteria, viruses, parasites.
Administered orally or by injection, it will stimulate the immune reactions of the body so that it will then defend against the microbe itself.

Immunity

• Either the whole microbe. In this case, the microbe is killed and unable to infect the body. What are its components that will cause the immune defense reaction.
• Either the whole microbe that was just reduced by special treatment and is now therefore not virulent. The body immediately antibodies against the microbe. The problem is that it can become virulent among those whose defenses are weakened.
• Either a component of the microbe (fragment of the capsule of the virus for example), or an enzyme closely related to the capsule, which has been identified as an antigen stimulating strong immune responses.

How does it happen?

• Whether the vaccine stimulates the cells of cellular immunity, which keep the memory and will attack more strongly the microbe during a subsequent contact. This is the case for example of BCG.
• Whether the vaccine stimulates receptors on B cells that produce antibodies. In a subsequent contact, production of antibodies is more rapid and intense, preventing disease development.