• Question: can u tell me some of the viruses we can get

    Asked by Noo Noo to Ruth, Mako, Claire on 17 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Ruth Elderfield

      Ruth Elderfield answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      Phew… the list is huge. The good news is we have made vaccines to quite a lot of them, especially the ones that are likely to make us very ill as children:
      Polio, Rotavirus, Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Influenza.
      As we get older we can get vaccines against Human papilloma virus, Hepatitis virus, rabies, yellow fever and even chicken pox.
      There isn’t any vaccine for HIV (which causes AIDS) or for Rhinovirus, responsible for the common cold.
      In the news at the moment there is a lot of talk about MERS, as it has infected people in countries around Saudi Arabia and South Korea, this is caused by a coronavirus, so called because the virus looks like it has a crown.

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