Vaccines have undoubtedly saved the lives of millions, and along with improved sanitation, they remain one of the cornerstones of modern medicine. Many diseases that were once widespread are now eradicated, but vaccine programs face ongoing challenges. Safety concerns as well as limited funding have led to pockets of reduced vaccine coverage around the world - including in developed countries. ...

Background: Africa has the lowest childhood vaccination coverage worldwide. If the full benefits of childhood vaccination programmes are to be enjoyed in sub-Saharan Africa, all countries need to improve on vaccine delivery to achieve and sustain high coverage. In this paper, we review trends in vaccination coverage, dropouts between vaccine doses and explored the country-specific predictors of...

This, the 5th annual immunisation coverage report, documents trends during 2011 for a range of standard measures derived from Australian Childhood Immunisation Register data, and National Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Vaccination Program Register data. The proportion of children 'fully vaccinated' at 12, 24 and 60 months of age was 91.4%, 92.2% and 89.5% respectively. Although pneumococcal vaccine...

BACKGROUND The Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) has recommended introduction of at least 1 dose of inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) at ≥14 weeks of age through the routine immunization program in countries currently not using IPV. METHODS We analyzed all available unrestricted data obtained from the Demographic and Health Surveys since 2005 in sub-Saharan Africa ...

BACKGROUND HPV vaccine coverage is far from ideal in Valencia, Spain, and this could be partially related to the low knowledge about the disease and the vaccine, therefore we assessed these, as well as the attitude towards vaccination in adolescent girls, and tried to identify independently associated factors that could potentially be modified by an intervention in order to increase vaccine cov...

Background: Vaccination against COVID-19 is as a key solution to interrupt its spread. This study aimed to describe the vaccination coverage required to stop the spread of COVID-19 in Sri Lanka using a mathematical modeling strategy. Materials & Methods: This longitudinal study used age-stratified and unstratified Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered (SIR) models. Data on the population's age dist...

disaster-affected populations are highly vulnerable to outbreaks of measles. therefore, a mass vaccination against measles was conducted in aila cyclone-affected blocks of west bengal, india in july 2009. the objectives of the present report were to conduct an in depth analysis of the campaign, and to discuss the major challenges. a block level micro-plan, which included mapping of the villages...

Acute bacterial meningitis causes a substantial number of deaths in Cameroon. Among 170 children with acute meningitis, 112 were positive for a bacterial pathogen when tested using polymerase chain reaction amplification, and Streptococcus pneumoniae accounted for 57.1% of cases. Pneumococcal serotype coverage by 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine was 62.1%. This study shows that in Camer...

Perspectives The international community has successfully promoted childhood vaccination as an essential public health intervention. This has been accomplished through efforts such as the World Health Organization's (WHO) Expanded Programme on Immunization and more recently, the establishment of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI Alliance), a global health partnership commi...

Since the late 1990s, the possible adverse effects of the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine have caused intense public debate. After the vaccine was introduced in 1988, coverage was high, increasing from 80% in 1989 to 92% in 1997. After 1997 coverage began to decline, and by 2001 had fallen by 4.1%, which gave some cause for concern. We examined the extent to which these trend...