Description
The big issues, the controversies, the debates – and the future. Despite the excellent track record of vaccines in some quarters they are still treated with considerable suspicion.
How can – and should – these doubters be convinced? In this episode of Vaccine Hunters we show this in Tajikistan where we filmed a father who refused to let his daughter be vaccinated against Polio because he thought it was a secret method of birth control.
There have also been riots against Polio vaccination campaigns and strong resistance to other vaccines like HPV (for example, immunising catholic girls against a sexually transmitted disease).
HPV is also important in terms of the trend for preventable vaccines – it’s harder to harness the immune system to make a therapeutic vaccine but scientists have been successful in trials currently taking place for vaccines targeting melanoma, kidney, lung and breast cancers, Hodgkin’s and Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
How – and is this the future of vaccines?