Vaccination Greatly Reduces Disease, Disability, Death and Inequity worldwide/La Vaccination Reduit Fortement la Morbidite, Les Incapacites, la Mortalite et Les Inegalites Dans L'ensemble Du monde/La Vacunacion Reduce Considerablemente la Morbilidad, Las Discapacidades, la Mortalidad Y Las Inequidades En Todo El Mundo

TLDR: In this article, the authors show how vaccines are valuable to both individuals and societies, to present validated facts, and to help redress adverse perceptions of vaccine safety and effectiveness, and the best way in the long term is to refute wrong allegations at the earliest opportunity by providing scientifically valid data This is easier said than done, because the adversary in this game plays according to rules that are not generally those of science

Abstract: Introduction Vaccination has greatly reduced the burden of infectious diseases Only clean water, also considered to be a basic human right, performs better (1) Paradoxically, a vociferous antivaccine lobby thrives today in spite of the undeniable success of vaccination programmes against formerly fearsome diseases that are now rare in developed countries (2) Understandably, vaccine safety gets more public attention than vaccination effectiveness, but independent experts and WHO have shown that vaccines are far safer than therapeutic medicines (2,3) Modern research has spurred the development of less reactogenic products, such as acellular pertussis vaccines and rabies vaccines produced in cell culture Today, vaccines have an excellent safety record and most "vaccine scares" have been shown to be false alarms (4,5) Misguided safety concerns in some countries have led to a fall in vaccination coverage, causing the re-emergence of pertussis and measles (6) Putative vaccine safety issues are commonly reported while reviews of vaccine benefits are few A Medline search over the past five years using the keywords "vaccine risks" scored approximately five times as many hits (2655 versus 557) as a Medline search using "vaccine benefits" as keywords (7) This reflects the fact that negative aspects of vaccination get much more publicity than positive aspects How one addresses the antivaccine movement has been a problem since the time of Jenner The best way in the long term is to refute wrong allegations at the earliest opportunity by providing scientifically valid data This is easier said than done, because the adversary in this game plays according to rules that are not generally those of science This issue will not be further addressed in this paper, which aims to show how vaccines are valuable to both individuals and societies, to present validated facts, and to help redress adverse perceptions Without doubt, vaccines are among the most efficient tools for promoting individual and public health and deserve better press (8) Disease control benefits Eradication Unless an environmental reservoir exists, an eradicated pathogen cannot reemerge, unless accidentally or malevolently reintroduced by humans, allowing vaccination or other preventive measures to be discontinued While eradication may be an ideal goal for an immunization programme, to date only smallpox has been eradicated, allowing discontinuation of routine smallpox immunization globally Potentially, other infectious diseases with no extrahuman reservoir can be eradicated provided an effective vaccine and specific diagnostic tests are available Eradication requires high levels of population immunity in all regions of the world over a prolonged period with adequate surveillance in place (9) The next disease targeted for eradication is polio, which is still a global challenge (10) Although high coverage with oral polio vaccine (OPV) has eliminated type 2 poliovirus globally, transmission of types 1 and 3 continues in limited areas in a few countries OPV-caused paralytic disease, directly or by reversion to virulence, and persistent vaccine-virus excretion in immunodeficient individuals are problems yet to be solved Global use of monovalent type 1 and type 30PV and inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) may eventually be required (10) Elimination Diseases can be eliminated locally without global eradication of the causative microorganism In four of six WHO regions, substantial progress has been made in measles elimination; transmission no longer occurs indigenously and importation does not result in sustained spread of the virus (11) Key to this achievement is more than 95% population immunity through a two-dose vaccination regimen Combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine could also eliminate and eventually eradicate rubella and mumps (11) Increasing measles immunization levels in Africa, where coverage averaged only 67% in 2004, is essential for eradication of this disease …