Vaccines: Some Successful, Others still Awaiting Results
Technology has improved over time. At the end of the second decade of the 21st century, we witnessed the fastest development of vaccines in human history.
A nurse prepares an injection of the Chinese made Covid-19 vaccine Sinovac at the Sabiha Uzun Maternal Child Health Center in Ankara on January 15, 2021.
Vaccination as a means to prevent disease transmission has been known for more than a century. Technology has improved over time. At the end of the second decade of the 21st century, we witnessed the fastest development of vaccines in human history.
Vaccines have been used as a means of disease prevention for more than a century. The earliest, most basic form of vaccination took place hundreds of years ago, when Buddhist monks drank snake venom to develop immunity against snake bites. Moreover, variolation, deliberately inoculating healthy people with the cowpox virus in order to protect them against smallpox, was a very common practice in 17th-century China.