A brief history of vaccines and an overview of their benefits.

Vaccines are the most cost-effective drugs available to date as they play an important role in the primary prevention of infectious diseases with a high percentage of efficacy, but they also prevent severe presentations of many illnesses when protection of contagion does not happen. The studies regarding their safety are also the most rigorous and highly powered among the field of medicine. Despite this, many concerns have been raised regarding the new anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. In such setting it is important to remember what vaccines can do for the prevention and eradication of infectious diseases.