What would a world without vaccines be like? | 91TV
Transcript
- I was born in Uganda in 1950,
- and a year and a half later I slipped out of bed one day
- and I collapsed on the floor.
- My parents immediately thought, "Oh, it's polio".
- It would be hard to imagine what a world without vaccines would be like.
- It would really be quite horrible.
- There would be outbreaks of disease regularly, all over the world.
- The true deep impact, and the global impact, of vaccines
- just can't be overestimated.
- My grandmother, she used to tell a story
- about when they would hear the bells on a hearse
- going down the high street, a funeral.
- She said as children they would rush to their nursery window
- to see if there were white ribbons on the horses
- which meant it was a child funeral,
- and they happened several times a week.
- It typically affected children.
- One of the names for polio was infantile paralysis.
- It's quite difficult to imagine a world without vaccines.
- Life expectancy would be a lot lower.
- People would have to lock themselves away
- and only come out again when it was safe.
- And ironically,
- there would be such a demand
- to do something that vaccines
- would inevitably emerge.
- Vaccines are likely the most important public health intervention
- of the last 100 years.
- They've saved over a billion lives.
- With the roll out of vaccines
- we have seen a massive reduction in child mortality
- in sub-Saharan Africa.
- I am born in the Gambia
- and growing up there I lost a brother to measles.
- To lose somebody at a very premature age
- from a disease preventable by vaccines is absolutely devastating.
- Vaccines can prevent cancer and there are two cancer vaccines.
- With the roll out of the current malaria vaccine
- we are expecting to see a reduction of 40% of malaria deaths.
- You could bring a vaccine to people
- but will they take it?
- Anti-vaccination fears have been around for over a century.
- We know from the 1850s, when Jenner first developed smallpox vaccine
- there were actually quite a few protests.
- A lot of it was about civil rights and libertarian values.
- There were arguments saying that it was poisonous,
- that children who received a smallpox vaccine
- would develop bovine or cow-like traits.
- A lot of it was just a genuine knowledge void
- that a lot of people had in the 1850s that they still have today.
- On the one hand we have the really hardcore anti-vaccination groups,
- but a lot of people are actually in the middle,
- and I think what we need to do is just engage with people
- where they are and where they are talking
- and not discount their real concerns.
- People want to understand things, they want to be confident,
- they might be afraid of needles.
- We have to understand their context and where they're coming from
- and what are their past experiences with health and vaccines.
- We have to ensure that people understand it and they will take it.
- A world without vaccines, it would be a matter of economic status
- where the children of the wealthy will have access to healthcare
- will be surviving.
- Vaccines are the only public health intervention that can bring equality.
- So women don't need to have five, 10 children
- just to see three of them grow to old age.
- This isn't about just individual rights,
- when you take a vaccine it's protecting yourself,
- it's protecting your family, and it's protecting your community.
- It's not just a personal choice,
- it's a moral choice as well that affects other people.
- It's impossible to [over] emphasise how important vaccines are.
- And the reason that we don't often realise that they're important
- is that we've eradicated many of these diseases.
- The idea that vaccines could be a victim of their own success,
- it's about taking things for granted, isn't it?
- And not looking behind
- what the privileges we have in the modern world are,
- and what makes it the modern world,
- and makes it a safe place for most of us to be,
- and vaccines are absolutely at the heart of that.
- They're fundamental.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown why we need vaccines. Thanks to vaccines, many of us have grown up without fear of contracting diseases such as polio and diphtheria. Do we take them for granted?
Video produced in collaboration with BBC Ideas.
Thumbnail image: Wellcome Collection
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