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Torsten Boehme gives a lecture on the history of immunization at the Waldkirchenforum

Created: 03/24/2022, 1:00 p.m

As a thank you, Barbara von Uthmann from the Lenggrieser Waldkirchenforum, speaker Dr.

Torsten Boehme the book "Pandemic World View".

© rbe

In the Waldkirchenforum, the internist and occupational physician Dr.

Torsten Boehme on the history of vaccination.

Lenggries – Guest at the Waldkirchenforum on Sunday was the internist and occupational physician Dr.

Torsten Boehme.

He works at Roche in Penzberg as senior company doctor.

His lecture on the history, technology and benefits of vaccination attracted many interested people to the evangelical forest church.

Right at the beginning, Boehme made it clear: "I do not represent any interests here, Roche does not manufacture any vaccines."

Hence the English term “Vaccination”

The English country doctor Edward Jenner is said to be the "inventor" of vaccination, as Boehme reported: Based on his observation that milkmaids who came into contact with the harmless cowpox did not contract the dreaded smallpox, he suspected that a person with the mild form of the disease infected person thus acquires immunity against the related but far more dangerous pathogen.

In 1796 - at that time nobody knew what a virus actually was - he first infected a child with cowpox and a few weeks later with the dangerous smallpox virus.

The risky experiment was successful and the child remained healthy.

Jenner called his procedure "Vaccination" - after the Latin word "vacca" for cow.

You can find even more current news from the region around at Merkur.de/Bad Tölz.

Vaccinations help to reduce child mortality and increase life expectancy

Researchers have been working on the development of vaccines that protect against dangerous viral diseases for decades.

It takes advantage of the human immune system.

Smallpox, polio, measles and other infectious diseases have been pushed back, and smallpox has been largely eradicated since 1980.

Among many other factors, according to Dr.

Boehme, vaccinations would have contributed to a significant reduction in child mortality and increased life expectancy.

The unfair distribution of vaccines was also discussed

However, one in six people worldwide still dies from an infectious disease, the doctor regretted: "The unfair distribution of vaccines in poor and rich countries due to the different financial resources" is also to blame.

While 70 to 100 percent of people in industrialized countries are vaccinated against Covid, this value is 15 percent for all of Africa, and in some countries even less than 1 percent.

And because tuberculosis, malaria and HIV are a much bigger problem on the black continent than here, the efforts to defeat these epidemics are unfortunately not as great as they are currently with Covid.

"There is still a lot to do," said Dr.

Boehme firmly.

“Always been much more reluctant to vaccinate in Germany”

“In industrialized countries there is now a vaccination requirement for up to eleven diseases – France, for example.

In Germany, on the other hand, people have always been much more reluctant to vaccinate,” emphasized Boehme.

Vaccination was only compulsory for measles and once for smallpox.

Today, the standard is that compulsory vaccination must be “reasonable” with regard to Article 2 of the Basic Law, which guarantees human physical integrity.

Vaccinations are associated with the risk of unwanted, but extremely rare, serious complications, Boehme clarified.

However, he pointed out that the risks of not vaccinating life-threatening diseases are many times higher.

Barbara von Uthmann, active at the Lenggrieser Waldkirchenforum, appreciated Boehme's informative and generally understandable lecture and gave him the book "Pandemic World View" with abysmal caricatures from all over the world on the corona pandemic.

Because she found out that the doctor has a sense of humor in addition to his specialist knowledge.

By Rainer Bannier

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