Herd Immunity

Abstract:
Herd Immunity also known as community immunity is a desired outcome wanted to be achieved and reached by the public health practitioners and the healthcare professionals to both prevent and lower the risks of having the vaccine preventable diseases so to apply the most important aspect of the preventable measures.

Keywords:
Herd Immunity; Public Health

Discussion:
Herd immunity to be defined as when a large amount of the population at a certain area is immune toward a specific disease so that if enough people are resistant to the etiology or the cause of the disease then microorganisms like the virus and the bacteria has nowhere to go to. However, the group or the community as a whole has the protection while not every single individual may be immune because there are fewer high-risk people overall then the infection’s rates will drop (Christine Yu, 2023).
Here comes the most important and most critical question in this topic which is how to achieve the Herd Immunity. The immunity can be created naturally when the individual gets infected
within a certain disease then the human body will establish resistant for future same infection and that resistant was built when antibodies created in the body from the first-time infection, and when occurs on a group or population level then Herd Immunity achieved and the best example is the Zika virus in Brazil. However, such resistant would be created as well via vaccines as the vaccine create antibodies in the human body for the individual against a certain infection till reach the Herd immunity on the population level and/ or the group level like the polio in USA (Christine Yu, 2023).

Conclusion and recommendations:
Now, to reach the Herd Immunity itself is a difficult and a challengeable goal but achievable and possible via coordinated collaboration and alignment between the designated sections and the
professionals related to the field to create then to implement then to apply and then to evaluate in order to end up achieving the ultimate public health goal for the targeted community which is the Herd Immunity.

Declaration:
This work was completed in partial fulfillment of a PgDip in Family Medicine course with Learna, validated by the University of Buckingham.

Reference:
- Christine Yu, 3rd January 2023. What is Herd Immunity. [Online]. Available at: https://www.webmd.com/covid/what-is-herd-immunity. Accessed on: 18th October 2023.

Author:

Anas Malik Radif Alubaidi, MBChB, MSc, PgDip, Prof Dip Paeds(RCPI), CCHW, FRSPH, NCET, NCPT

*Bachelor of Medicine and General Surgery/ Baghdad University

*Master of Science in Public Health/ University of South Wales

*Postgraduate Diploma Degree in Acute Medicine/ University of South Wales

*Postgraduate Diploma Degree in Care of the Elderly/ University of Wales Trinity Saint David

*Professional diploma in Pediatrics/ Royal College of Physicians of Ireland

*Nevada Board Certified Community Health Worker

*Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health

*National Certified ECG Technician

*National Certified Phlebotomy Technician