Yang Weizhong: Vaccines are the "firewall" that isolates viruses

Source: People's Daily News

Yang Weizhong, Vice President of the Chinese Preventive Medicine Association and Executive Dean of the School of Group Medicine and Public Health of Peking Union Medical College

On December 15, the first People's Health Conference and the 2021 Healthy China Action Innovation Practice Summary Conference sponsored by the People's Network, undertaken by people's health and supported by the Chinese Preventive Medicine Association were held in Beijing. Professor Yang Weizhong, Vice President of the Chinese Preventive Medicine Association and Executive Dean of the School of Group Medicine and Public Health of Peking Union Medical College, attended the event and delivered a keynote speech.

Yang Weizhong believes that vaccines have a very important role in the prevention and control of diseases, and it belongs to a prevention and control method with less cost and significant effect. Whether it is China or the world, it is recognized as a weapon for preventing infectious diseases, helping to reduce the harm of diseases to health and life, reducing the economic burden, reducing the pain of children's illness, and reducing the time costs of parental care and missed work.

"Through human efforts, through scientific and technological methods, and the first infectious disease that has been eradicated in history is smallpox, and there have been no cases of smallpox in Our country since 1964." Yang Weizhong said, "And the fundamental measure to eliminate smallpox is vaccination." ”

Yang Weizhong introduced that in the 50s and 60s of the last century, people talked about polio and discoloration, which is an acute infectious disease caused by poliovirus, which will seriously endanger children's health and even lead to death. In 1960, China began to promote the polio vaccine for children, also known as "sugar pills". This prevention has had an alarming effect, with no more indigenous cases of primary polio since the last indigenous case in 1994.

Yang Weizhong said that infectious diseases that rely on vaccines to achieve elimination also include tetanus. In 2012, the World Health Organization announced that China had eliminated maternal and neonatal tetanus cases by promoting hospital deliveries and tetanus vaccines.

Yang Weizhong said that the value of vaccines is huge, the promotion of vaccination in China to achieve the goal of eliminating smallpox and polio, the elimination of neonatal tetanus, to achieve the hepatitis B phased control goal, greatly reduce the above diseases and measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, Japanese encephalitis, brain and other vaccine-preventable diseases caused by death, saving huge direct medical costs, reducing the burden on families and society, its social and economic benefits are remarkable.

Yang Weizhong believes that in the near future, it is expected to eliminate measles, hepatitis B and other diseases through vaccination-based measures.