Medical Term

immunization

the production of IMMUNITY to disease by artificial means. Injection of an ANTISERUM will produce temporary passive immunity, while active immunity is produced by making the body generate its own ANTIBODIES . This is done by the use of treated ANTIGENS ( VACCINATION or INOCULATION ). VACCINE is used for immunization, and it may be derived from live BACTERIA or VIRUSES or dead organisms or their products.

Source: mediLexicon corpus · slug immunization