Who is Professor Hallux?

Professor Hallux is a scientist who is really curious about everything to do with the human body!

With the help of Nurse Nanobot he wants to find out everything he can about medicine.

We’re going to be exploring Professor Hallux’s Map of Medicine to help us learn all we can about it!

Listen to this clip all about vaccinations…

What are vaccinations?

Vaccinations are a type of medicine that you normally get through an injection. That’s when someone pokes a sharp needle into you and the medicine goes into your body through the end of the needle.

Vaccinations are quite special because they don’t cure you of a disease or illness, instead they prevent you from getting them in the first place!

All a vaccine is is a dead version of the disease you are vaccinating against.

Wait, so you inject me with a disease to stop me getting that disease?

Sort of, the vaccine is a dead or inactive version of the disease so it can’t hurt you.

Your body protects you from diseases by making antibodies. These are things in the blood that fight disease. The body needs to make very specific antibodies to fight every type of disease that might get into your body. We get ill when the disease makes us ill before our body has time to make the right antibodies to fight the disease.

When we are injected with a vaccine our body sees the dead disease and makes the right antibodies. This means that if our body ever sees the disease for real then it already has the right antibodies to fight it before we get ill.

Vaccines have been so successful in stopping people getting diseases that it has actually stopped one disease from existing!

There used to be a really horrible disease called Smallpox.

It used to give people a fever and some really nasty skin rashes. It used to kill a lot of people too and if you had it you could easily pass it on to someone else.

Thanks to people being vaccinated against Smallpox it no longer exists!

Some of the diseases we vaccinate against

When you were a baby you would have had vaccinations to stop you getting a load of diseases. You may have even had some more while you’ve been at school.

Here are some of the diseases we vaccinate against in the UK…

Polio

This used to be very common in the UK.

Nothing would happen to most people who had Polio, but in some people it would cause paralysis which means that they couldn’t move!

Polio has been super rare ever since we started vaccinating against it in the 1950s.

Tetanus

This can make your jaw lock up making it really hard to talk.

Tetanus almost doesn’t exist in the UK now thanks to vaccines.

Mumps

This is a horrible disease that can make your face swell up and makes people look a little bit like a hamster.

This too is super rare thanks to vaccines!

Who gives me my vaccines?

Your parents will usually arrange all your vaccinations while you were really young.

The person who actually injects you with the vaccine will be a doctor, a nurse or a health visitor.

You’ll get your injections at the doctors office or sometimes people will come into your school so that they can vaccinate you and all your friends at the same time.

Your mission is to complete this quiz…

Click here if you want to find out more about Professor Hallux’s Map of Medicine