Guest editorial

Abstract

Many authors have suggested that one of the most important contributing factors to the enhanced survival of the human population over time has been the vaccination of children. You only have to think of polio and how vaccination spared generations of that disease. Naturally, though, improvements in environmental status, such as favourable living conditions and improved quality of life, have also played an important role in this. Today, as we face a critical infectious disease - COVID-19 in the form of a pandemic both globally, on a national scale and, in our case, a provincial scale, the significant contribution that vaccines make to controlling and preventing infection has become a topic uppermost in the minds of both healthcare professionals and the general public. So important is the COVID vaccine to human survival that many countries and corporations will not permit access if people cannot prove that they have been vaccinated. For this reason, 'vaccine visas' have become a commonplace passport of sorts that make it possible to cross national borders as much as business thresholds. Accordingly, which vaccine you have received has become much less of an issue than having had the vaccination itself. A COVID-19 vaccine now appears to be the only sure-fire way of preventing severe disease and death from the virus in citizens of all ages.