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Vaccinations Specialist

Passaic Medical & Wellness -  - General Practitioner

Passaic Medical & Wellness

General Practitioners located in Passaic, NJ

Vaccinations are a safe and easy way of avoiding unpleasant and potentially deadly diseases like measles, polio, tetanus, and diphtheria. If you’re due for a vaccination or aren’t sure what you need, the experienced team at Passaic Medical & Wellness in Passaic, New Jersey, can help. The highly-qualified staff members can advise you on optimizing your and your child’s defense against preventable diseases with a vaccination schedule, so call them today or book an appointment using the online tool.

Vaccinations Q & A

Why are vaccinations important?

Vaccinating against disease is a far better approach to health care than trying to treat you when you’re already sick. Vaccinations prevent disease from taking hold, offering potentially life-saving benefits as well as ensuring you avoid the distress, pain, and inconvenience of having a serious illness.

Current immunization programs protect you and your children with a series of vaccinations that prevent you from catching diseases such as:

  • Measles
  • Mumps
  • Rubella
  • Diphtheria
  • Tetanus
  • Chickenpox
  • Rotavirus
  • Pneumococcal infection
  • Whooping cough (pertussis)
  • Haemophilus influenza type b (Hib)
  • Hepatitis A and B
  • Polio
  • Flu

Many of these conditions can cause serious complications and sometimes death, but vaccinations effectively wipe out the threat of such diseases.

How do vaccinations work?

Vaccinations work by using the power of your body’s immune system. Your immune system is continually looking for threats to your health, and when it identifies a potentially dangerous bacteria or virus, your white blood cells release antibodies to attack the invading organism.

Once your immune system deals with the threat, it remembers the next time you encounter the same organism and is ready to wipe it out. Very often, you don’t even realize you’ve come in contact with an infection because your immune system crushes the threat before you experience any symptoms.

Vaccinations are an ingenious way of giving your immune system the information it needs to create antibodies to fight specific diseases, without you having to endure a bout of sickness first. Vaccines use either a dead form of the infection or a weakened live version. Some types of vaccines use inactive forms of the toxins that infections produce.

When you receive a vaccination, your immune system creates the antibodies it needs to give you protection from the disease.

Are vaccinations always effective?

Vaccinations for most diseases are highly effective, and once you or your child receive the recommended course of shots, you don’t need to worry about ever getting sick from that particular infection.

Some types of vaccination like tetanus requires a booster shot at intervals throughout your life to maintain your immunity, while with others, a single shot or series of shots early on is all you need.

In the case of influenza, there are multiple different strains of the flu, so one type of flu vaccine doesn’t protect against other strains. Each year experts predict what’s going to be the dominant flu strain so you can have a vaccine that’s most likely going to protect you and your family, but you need to get a new shot every year.

Find out what vaccinations you need or arrange for a flu shot by calling Passaic Medical & Wellness today, or book an appointment online.