CONSPIRACIES AND CULTURAL BARRIES IN HEALTH

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Vaccination is simply the introduction of a vaccine to a living body, which is mostly a living antigen, to prevent the occurrence of that specific disease from infecting the living body, for example, BCG, Polio. Etc. While these antigens are supposed to serve as protection to the body, they sometimes fail and are unable to function as expected. Other times, they may tend to have serious side effects, which is a reason of the many reasons why a lot of people have rejected taking certain vaccines. An example of these side effects is the side effects of the recent coronavirus pandemic, which causes serious side effects like paralysis. Some of the individuals who were able to take the first dose of the coronavirus vaccines were affected with cases of paralysis, vomiting, dizziness, and numbness. Etc.

The craziest theories of recent times still Centre on the last pandemic, the coronavirus vaccine. While the vaccination was to prevent people from contracting the virus, a lot of individuals believed that the vaccination process was mainly for population reduction. A lot of people refused to be administered this vaccine because they had the idea that the vaccine was meant to wipe out people from the face of the earth in the long run, to reduce the world’s population. The human population has been increasing progressively, causing the world to be overpopulated and the scarce resources to be too limited to sustain the world. This has brought about a lot of false theories and beliefs by individuals that there is a plan to reduce the world’s population, since it has been recommended in several studies by several scholars.

Other theories include cultural factors; some cultural practices do not allow for vaccination, and it is believed in some cultures that a child is to be given a vaccine only if proven to be weak and has a lower chance of survival in life. Strong and healthy kids are not allowed in this culture to be vaccinated. As a result of this, some parents refuse vaccination of their kids, believing in the believe and ideology that their children are not weak and, with that, will prefer not to accept the vaccination for their kids.

In my opinion, vaccination have been proven to be useful and helpful across the world in general, seeing the cases in some part of northern Nigeria where children suffer because their parents are not exposed enough to understand the importance of vaccination and because of some cultural theories and other factors refuse to give their children these vaccines causing these kids to suffer from some certain ailment which could have been prevented with the help of vaccination.

Although I did not receive the coronavirus vaccine, I have been administered numerous vaccines since birth, ranging from the BCG vaccine, polio vaccine, etc. and in recent times, the hepatitis vaccine and vaccination for tuberculosis.

Thank you for reading. My name is @rishagamo, and this is my response to the Hive Learners weekly Featured Content Week 175 Episode 01: “VACCINATION”.