Pharmacology Cheat Sheet
Vaccine Principles and Safe Delivery
Vaccines and health programmes for NEET-PG: UIP schedule, herd immunity formula, cold chain rules, NTEP TB regimen, and malaria and leprosy drugs.
MedNext Academy | 3 min read
Vaccine Principles and Safe Delivery
Vaccines and health programmes for NEET-PG: UIP schedule, herd immunity formula, cold chain rules, NTEP TB regimen, and malaria and leprosy drugs.
Vaccines and national health programmes covering immunisation platforms, the Indian UIP schedule, cold chain, and drug regimens for TB, malaria, and leprosy.
High-yield lines
- Vaccines confer active immunity needing 1 to 6 weeks to develop protective titres, while passive immunisation with preformed antibodies acts within hours but is short-lived.
- Live UIP vaccines include OPV, BCG, measles or MMR, varicella, rotavirus, yellow fever, and JE, and are avoided in immunosuppression and pregnancy.
- Conjugate vaccines are immunogenic in children under 2 and generate memory, unlike plain polysaccharide vaccines which are T-cell independent.
- Herd immunity threshold equals 1 minus 1 over R-nought, and measles needs about 92 to 95% coverage due to its high R-nought.
- BCG is given intradermally at birth into the left upper arm and can cause a false-positive tuberculin test.
- OPV is the most heat-sensitive UIP vaccine, stored frozen, while alum-adjuvanted vaccines like DPT, HepB, and IPV must never be frozen.
- The pentavalent vaccine combines whole-cell DPT with hepatitis B and Hib conjugate.
- Vaccine-associated paralytic polio occurs at about 1 in 2.4 million OPV doses.
- The current NTEP regimen for new drug-sensitive TB is 2 months of HRZE followed by 4 months of HRE, given daily throughout.
- Rifampicin is the most bactericidal antileprosy drug, killing about 99.9% of bacilli after a single dose, given monthly under supervision.
- Chloroquine plus 14 days of primaquine treats P. vivax malaria, with G6PD testing required before primaquine to achieve radical cure of hypnozoites.
- Liposomal amphotericin B as a single dose made the kala-azar elimination programme feasible, and miltefosine is the only oral drug but is teratogenic.
- Weekly iron and folic acid supplementation is delivered to adolescents under the WIFS programme with blue tablets.
- Smallpox is the only human disease eradicated, achieved in 1980.
Mapped competency codes
- PH1.54
- PH1.55
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This summary maps to PH14-vaccines-and-national-health-programs.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is the herd immunity threshold calculated?
HIT equals 1 minus 1 over R-nought; measles with a high R-nought needs about 92 to 95% coverage.
Which UIP vaccine is most heat-sensitive and which must never be frozen?
OPV is the most heat-sensitive and is stored frozen, while alum-adjuvanted DPT, HepB, and IPV must never be frozen.
What is the standard NTEP regimen for new drug-sensitive TB?
Two months of daily HRZE followed by four months of daily HRE.
What must be checked before giving primaquine for vivax malaria?
G6PD status, because primaquine causes haemolysis in G6PD deficiency; it provides radical cure by killing hypnozoites.
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