Public Health Achievement
The public health achievement considered for this exercise is the combating of preventable diseases using vaccines. For the best part, the world was faced with numerous deaths annually resulting from preventable diseases. The introduction of vaccines has been an enormous contribution to the management of public health, with some of the diseases that devastated the world, in the names of smallpox and rinderpest being eradicated. Additionally, the overall cases resulting from these diseases, whether fatal or otherwise, has dramatically reduced over the years.
There was the introduction of new vaccines that targeted 17 diseases under the radar and subsequent management. The introduction of vaccines saw an introduction of a vaccination policy both in the US and across the world. Children, immediately after birth, are placed on a routine of vaccinations. These vaccinations are spread over some time. They introduce a pathogen into the body and help the immune system simulate how it can fight a possible infection from such a pathogen in the future. The introduced pathogens are called antigens. The diseases targeted by these vaccines vary from measles and tuberculosis to human papillomavirus.
The World Health Organization (WHO), through Expanded Program of Immunization, launched in 1974 as well as the Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunization launched in 2000 have increased the mass sensitization on the importance of vaccination (Greenwood, 2014). Diseases like polio and tuberculosis, though not effectively eliminated, have been significantly reduced over the years. The reduction in the number of cases of these preventable diseases has effectively reduced the mortality rate. These immunizations have boosted the immune systems of people across the world, and hence their susceptibility to contracting these diseases significantly reduces.
Reference
Greenwood, B. (2014). The contribution of vaccination to global health: past, present, and future. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 369(1645), 20130433. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2013.0433