Immunizations offer safe, effective protection from diseases such as measles, hepatitis, tetanus, and many more. At HAPI Medical Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, experienced family medicine physician Mai Vi Hoang, MD, and her team offer a comprehensive range of immunizations to protect Asian and Pacific Islander communities. If you have any questions about immunizations and how they safeguard you and your family, call HAPI Medical Center or book an appointment online today.
Immunizations protect you and your family from potentially lethal diseases. They prime your immune system so your body can defend itself when you encounter a pathogen like a bacteria or virus.
Immunizations play a vital role in preventive medicine, helping you to avoid ill health and the pain, misery, expense, and inconvenience it causes. These safe, simple procedures are one of the easiest ways of safeguarding your health.
Viruses, bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms that cause disease are all around you, waiting for a chance to enter your body and multiply. Fortunately, your immune system puts up a robust defense. Immunizations use your body’s natural ability to fight off infection.
When your immune system identifies a potentially harmful invader, it produces antibodies that locate and destroy the infection. If you haven’t had a disease before, it can take a while for your immune system to identify the invader, so you might get sick for a few days before recovering.
In many cases, once you’ve had a disease, your body stores a blueprint to design more antibodies. Should you reencounter the same one, your immune system reacts instantly, producing the right antibodies to destroy the infection.
Immunizations contain tiny quantities of substances that give your body the information it needs to identify and destroy the harmful invader.
The substances used in immunization programs are safe and can’t infect you with the disease. Some use dead or weakened microorganisms; others use genetic material. In each case, your immune system gets enough information to create antibodies for that disease.
HAPI Medical Center recommends the following immunizations:
Most immunizations take place in childhood, and many protect you for life. Some might need occasional boosters — for example, if you suffer a puncture wound, you might need a tetanus booster. Others, like flu and COVID-19, require regular boosters to maintain immunity.
The HAPI Medical Center team can advise you on which immunizations you and your family need and when to have boosters.
To protect yourself and your loved ones from disease, talk to the HAPI Medical Center team about immunizations. You can call the office or book an appointment online today.