by Patrick
(Freetown, Sierra Leone)
I have taken some vaccines against several diseases, and I realized that on my vaccination certificate, it states "IMMUNE" against a particular disease. Can you please let me know what this means?
Patrick,
Thanks for your question. While I am not an expert on vaccination certificates, or what is written on them, and what the terms indicate, I am happy to give you my educated guess, nothing more, based on how I understand vaccinations work.
Vaccinations are intended to cause your immune system to activate a defense to a particular disease or virus. So it seems likely that if you were vaccinated for disease or virus "X" , that the vaccination authorities have reasonable confidence that you would now be classified as immune to disease or virus "X"in their estimation.
So they would indicate this on your certificate, and this is likely what you are seeing. This helps to keep your medical records up to date for various practical reasons.
If you still have questions about this, I would recommend that you speak with a representative of the vaccination center that issued the certificate to you in order to obtain a more thorough explanation.
Hope that helps!