• Question: If you were to choose the 5 most important vaccines, which would they be? And why?

    Asked by anon-256917 on 16 Jun 2020.
    • Photo: Lucy McGowan

      Lucy McGowan answered on 16 Jun 2020:

      I’m not enough of an expert to list 5 vaccines in detail, but I would say that the smallpox vaccine is historically the most important vaccine. Smallpox was a brutal disease which killed around 1 in 10 people in the UK and left many others permanently disfigured. The smallpox vaccine was the first vaccine to be discovered, by Edward Jenner in the late 1700s. This pioneered the way for all other future vaccines and lead to the total eradication of smallpox globally by 1979. Smallpox is the only disease which we have successfully completely eradicated.
      I’d also say that the measles vaccine is very important. Measles is a highly contagious viral disease. The number of people killed by measles decreased by around 97% globally since 1980 due to vaccination programmes which create herd immunity to measles. In recent years, an increase in misinformation about the vaccine has lead to a drop in the number of vaccinations, resulting in an increase in the number of measles cases.
      I think these 2 examples show just how important vaccines are and how much protection they give us from dangerous diseases.

    • Photo: Rachel Tanner

      Rachel Tanner answered on 22 Jun 2020:

      Hi David,

      I would say the most important vaccines we already have are:

      – Smallpox (now totally eradicated)
      – Polio (there were 350,000 cases per year in 1988 vs. 104 cases in 2018)
      – Diphtheria (50,804 cases per year in 1941 vs. 1 case in 2014)
      – Pertussis (92,407 cases per year in 1956 vs. 3506 cases in 2014)
      – Measles (460,407 cases per year in 1967 and 130 cases in 2014)

      In terms of the most important vaccines we still need, my top 5 would be:

      – COVID-19
      – TB
      – Malaria
      – HIV
      – Hepatitis C

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