Contents:
- Medical Video: Adults Need to Stay Up to Date on Vaccines Too (HD)
- Who needs an adult vaccine?
- 1. You may not have been protected by a vaccine as a child
- 2. Some vaccines are only for adults
- 3. You might need it when traveling
- 4. You are not fully vaccinated as a child
- 5. You work as a health care staff
- 6. You are sexually active
- 7. Other factors
Medical Video: Adults Need to Stay Up to Date on Vaccines Too (HD)
Vaccines are usually given to infants or toddlers. However, do you know if adults also need a vaccine as a protection against disease? In adults, the vaccine needed will depend on a number of things, namely age, lifestyle, high-risk health conditions, and travel plans if you are happytraveling abroad.
Who needs an adult vaccine?
1. You may not have been protected by a vaccine as a child
Some vaccines need it booster to keep you protected, even if you got it as a child. Some vaccines that are needed booster among them, influenza vaccines and Tdap vaccines for tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis.
For influenza vaccines, you need to repeat it every year to anticipate before the flu season comes.
2. Some vaccines are only for adults
HPV vaccine, herpes zoster, pneumonia, typhoid fever, yellow fever or yellow fever are several types of vaccines that are only given to adults.
3. You might need it when traveling
To protect you from disease infections that are not from your home country, you need a vaccine when traveling to certain countries. For example, you need to do meningitis vaccination when you want to do the Hajj or go to the area of Saudi Arabia. Or, yellow fever vaccination you need to do when you want to travel to Sub-Saharan Africa and South America.
4. You are not fully vaccinated as a child
It is possible that you have not received a complete vaccination when you were young. Usually, parents only give vaccinations given free of charge at Posyandu or Puskesmas, such as hepatitis B, polio, BCG, DPT-HB-HIB, and measles. In fact, your baby also needs another vaccine that is not provided free by the government, such as PCV, rotavirus, influenza, MMR, hepatitis A, and varicella. So, you need the vaccination when you are an adult.
5. You work as a health care staff
If you work at a health care provider, you need to get vaccinations in full and routinely booster. Health facilities such as clinics, health centers, and hospitals are a gathering place for all potential infections that can make unprotected people experience nosocomial infections, aka infections acquired and develop when someone is in a hospital environment.
Some types of vaccinations that you need to do are vaccines against measles, mumps, rubella (MMR), hepatitis B, influenza, and others.
6. You are sexually active
For those of you who have been sexually active, hepatitis B and HPV vaccines are highly recommended. In fact, you can get the HPV vaccine when you are a teenager.
7. Other factors
If you smoke, have a weak or disturbed immune system, or have certain medical conditions, you need to get a pneumococcal vaccine to help prevent serious diseases such as pneumonia, meningitis, and blood infections caused by bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides vaccine recommendations for adults, namely:
- Seasonal flu, for all adults
- Pertussis or whooping cough, for all adults who have never received the Tdap vaccine and for women during each pregnancy.
- Tetanus and diphtheria, every 10 years after the Tdap vaccine
- Herpes zoster, for adults aged 60 years and over
- Pneumococcal disease, for adults aged 65 years and over and adults younger than 65 years who have specific health conditions
