Vaccine
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As part of the National Immunisation Program (NIP) students in Australia receive adolescent immunisations through the School Immunisation Program at 12 to 13 years. For children with disabilities attending specialist schools, no vaccine uptake data is collected at this time point. We aimed to determine uptake of diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (dTpa) and Human Papillomavirus (HPV) immunisations amongst young people with disabilities in specialist schools in Victoria. ⋯ This is the first study in Australia to report that uptake of adolescent immunisations in specialist schools for young people with a disability is significantly lower than in mainstream settings. Comparative data during the same time period for students in mainstream schools demonstrated higher uptake, at 89% for dTpa and 75% for three doses of HPV. These data highlight the inequity of receipt of school-based immunisations for this group of adolescents, the barriers to which could be more thoroughly explored through qualitative inquiry from a socio-ecological perspective.
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Mandatory policies have the potential to increase uptake of influenza ('flu') vaccination among healthcare workers (HCWs), but concerns have been expressed about their acceptability and effectiveness. We explored views on three mandatory policies (declination forms, face masks or reduced patient contact, and mandatory vaccination) among both HCWs and flu vaccination programme managers in the National Health Service (NHS) in England. ⋯ Mandatory vaccination and face masks would not be strongly supported if introduced in the UK. If declination forms are adopted, they should be used in a constructive intelligence-gathering manner which avoids stigmatising HCWs.
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Serotypes/genotypes causing invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) in adults are determined by vaccination strategies. The aim of this study was to assess the epidemiology of IPD in adults (≥18 years) after PCV13 introduction for children: serotypes, clonal complexes, antibiotic non-susceptibility and clinical presentations. We performed a prospective, clinical surveillance of hospitalized culture-confirmed IPDs in adults in nine Spanish hospitals (August 2010-June 2015). ⋯ Overall non-susceptibility was 25.9% to penicillin (1.1% for parenteral criteria), 24.9% to erythromycin and 2.7% to levofloxacin. Although the percentage of vaccine-types causing IPDs in adults significantly decreased, it remained high. Associations of vaccine types with pneumonia (with complicated pneumonia for specific serotypes), and immunocompetent patients point to the burden of IPD caused by PCV13 serotypes.
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Historical Article
Vaccine-preventable disease control in the People's Republic of China: 1949-2016.
China's immunization program is one of the oldest and largest in the world. Rates of vaccine-preventable diseases (VPD) are comparable to those in high-income countries. The program's evolution has been characterized by ambitious target setting and innovative strategies that have not been widely described. ⋯ Long-term political commitment to immunizations as a basic right, ambitious targets, use of disease incidence as the primary metric to assess program performance, and nationwide scale-up of successful locally developed strategies that optimized use of available limited resources have been critical to China's success in controlling vaccine-preventable diseases.
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Among all post-marketing medication error reports submitted to EudraVigilance, vaccines are the most frequently reported medicinal products. This study aims to describe the characteristics of vaccination errors submitted to Eudravigilance between 2001 and 2016. ⋯ Vaccination errors are increasingly submitted to EudraVigilance. Errors related to the schedule are the most common errors reported with vaccines. However, consequences of vaccination errors appear to be relatively mild.