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World Obesity Day is observed on 4th March each year. This day tries to create awareness around obesity and how it is harmful to your overall health and different body organs. It also educates people around the world about different ways to tackle obesity. According to WHO, obesity rates have nearly tripled since 1975 and have increased almost five times in children and adolescents, affecting people of all ages from all social groups in both developed and developing countries.
The accumulation of excess and abnormal fat in the body which may harm your health in various ways is defined as being overweight or obese. The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) defines an individual as being overweight when their Body Mass Index (B.M.I.) is over 25 and obese when it is over 30. The prevalence of obesity has exponentially increased in the last 4 decades.
Obesity is also a major risk factor for chronic conditions like type-2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke and certain cancers. World Obesity Day 2021 focuses on the global campaign 'Every Body Needs Everybody.' This campaign invites people around the world to collectively address this global crisis.
Read more: Every Body Needs Everybody – World Obesity Day 2021
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As of 08 February, 537,820 Davao City residents are already included in the master list to receive the first shots of coronavirus vaccination soon to be rolled out in Davao City. These are the individuals under the priority Group A that includes 16,677 health workers, 77,189 senior citizens, 5,258 uniformed personnel and 432,549 indigent residents.
This according to City Health Office (CHO) in-charge and the focal person of the Covid-19 Task Force Dr. Ashley Lopez, who presented the COVID-19 situation of Davao City before the Coordinated Operations to Defeat Epidemic KON (C.O.D.E.) Team visit at Mabini Elementary School on Tuesday, February 16.
“The number would still go up as the city government continues master listing conducted by the CHO for the health workers, Office of the Senior Citizen (OSCA), City Social Welfare and Development Office (CSWDO), and the uniformed personnel under the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Philippine National Police (PNP), Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), and Citizen Armed Force Geographical Unit (CAFGU)” the City Health Officer added.
Read more: Over 500K Davao City Residents priority in anti-COVID Vaccination
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Most vaccines have been in use for decades, with millions of people receiving them safely every year. As with all medicines, every vaccine must go through extensive and rigorous testing to ensure it is safe before it can be introduced in a country’s vaccine program.
Under normal circumstances, vaccine development is a long, complex process, often lasting 10-15 years and involving a combination of public and private involvement. The current system for developing, testing, and regulating vaccines has evolved during the 20th century as the groups involved in their development standardized their procedures and regulations.
Each vaccine under development must first undergo screenings and evaluations to determine which antigen should be used to invoke an immune response. This preclinical phase is done without testing on humans. An experimental vaccine is first tested in animals to evaluate its safety and potential to prevent disease.
If the vaccine triggers an immune response, it is then tested in human clinical trials in three phases.
Phase 1
The vaccine is given to a small number of volunteers to assess its safety, confirm it generates an immune response, and determine the right dosage. Generally, in this phase vaccines are tested in young, healthy adult volunteers.
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Typically, many vaccine candidates will be evaluated before any are found to be both safe and effective. For example, of all the vaccines that are studied in the lab and laboratory animals, roughly 7 out of every 100 will be considered good enough to move into clinical trials in humans. Of the vaccines that do make it to clinical trials, just one in five is successful. Having lots of different vaccines in development increases the chances that there will be one or more successful vaccines that will be shown to be safe and efficacious for the intended prioritized populations.
There are three main approaches to designing a vaccine. Their differences lie in whether they use a whole virus or bacterium; just the parts of the germ that triggers the immune system; or just the genetic material that provides the instructions for making specific proteins and not the whole virus.
Inactivated vaccine
The first way to make a vaccine is to take the disease-carrying virus or bacterium, or one very similar to it, and inactivate or kill it using chemicals, heat or radiation. This approach uses technology that’s been proven to work in people – this is the way the flu and polio vaccines are made – and vaccines can be manufactured on a reasonable scale.
However, it requires special laboratory facilities to grow the virus or bacterium safely, can have a relatively long production time, and will likely require two or three doses to be administered.
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We’ve all been looking forward to having a vaccine against COVID-19. Now that it’s finally here, many of us want to know more about what’s in it. But in order to understand its components, let us first breakdown the common ingredients of vaccines and why these ingredients are necessary.
As most people may know, vaccines contain tiny fragments of the disease-causing organism or the blueprints for making the tiny fragments. However, they also contain other ingredients to keep the vaccine safe and effective. These latter ingredients are included in most vaccines and have been used for decades in billions of doses of vaccine.
Today’s vaccines use only the ingredients they need to be safe and effective. Each vaccine component serves a specific purpose, and each ingredient is tested in the manufacturing process. All ingredients are tested for safety. For example, vaccine ingredients may:
- Help provide immunity (protection) against a specific disease
- Help keep the vaccine safe and long lasting
- Be used during the production of the vaccine
But let’s get down to specifics. The following are the ingredients commonly used in vaccines:
Antigen
All vaccines contain an active component (the antigen) which generates an immune response, or the blueprint for making the active component. The antigen may be a small part of the disease-causing organism, like a protein or sugar, or it may be the whole organism in a weakened or inactive form.
Read more: What vaccines are made of: Breaking down vaccine components
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Once a vaccine has reached pre-approval stage following clinical trials, it is assessed by the relevant regulatory body for compliance with quality, safety and efficacy criteria. Following regulatory approval, manufacturers can submit a vaccine to WHO for prequalification (PQ), an assessment process that ensures quality, safety and efficacy and helps the UN and other international procurement organizations determine the programmatic suitability of a vaccine.
During global health emergencies, the WHO Emergency Use Listing Procedure (EUL) may be used to allow emergency use of the vaccine. The EUL exists because, in a pandemic situation, products that could benefit the lives of people all over the world may be prevented from coming to market with sufficient speed. The EUL is a fast-tracked but rigorous process, designed to bring impactful products to all those in need, as quickly as possible, on a time-limited basis and based on a risk-versus-benefit evaluation. The WHO PQ/EUL recommendation may be used by UN agencies such as UNICEF and the Pan American Health Organization Revolving Fund for procurement decisions in low- and middle-income countries. Gavi also relies on WHO EUL/PQ to specify which vaccines its funds may be used to purchase.
How it’s packaged
Once the vaccine has been made in bulk quantities, it is bottled in glass vials and then carefully packaged for safe cold storage and transport.
Vaccine packaging must be able to withstand extreme temperatures, as well as the risks involved in being transported globally. Therefore, vaccine vials are most commonly made from glass, as it is durable and able to maintain its integrity in extreme temperatures.
How it’s stored
When a vaccine is too hot or too cold, it becomes less effective or even inactive. If stored at the incorrect temperature, vaccines can be ruined or unsafe for use. Most vaccines require refrigerated storage at between 2 and 8 °C. Some vaccines require temperatures as cold as -20°C. Some of the newer vaccines need to be kept ultra cold at -70°C. For frozen vaccines some of them can be safely stored for a limited time between 2 and 8°C.
Regular refrigerators cannot maintain an even temperature consistently, so specialized medical refrigerators are required for these precious products.
Read more: Safety, Transport and Quality Control of Vaccines
