SUMMARY

Summary



Summary

Vaccine-preventable Diseases, Immunizations, and the Epidemic Intelligence Service

The aforementioned article is written by Alan R. Hinman*, Walter A. Orenstein, and Anne Schuchat, and it was published in American Journal of Epidemiology in 2011. The article covers the agenda of vaccine preventable diseases like polio, smallpox, measles, rubella, and diphtheria. This approach resulted into huge decline in such diseases throughout the world. These vaccines prevent children against 16 diseases if provided on timely basis. The CDC i.e. Centre for disease control and prevention that was formed in 1946 conducted through research and investigation in this regard since then. The aforementioned article summarizes the results of investigations done by CDC and EISO from 1946 to 2005.

All the reports of epidemic assistance investigations are managed by CDC in a year wise manner. The resultant list was comprised of topic of investigation and various authors found that these listed diseases are now controlled by vaccine. The results revealed that 20% of all diseases were researched during the 60 years of time period. The research showed that Hepatitis was the most dangerous investigated condition out of 338 investigations; influenza, pneumonia, and acute respiratory diseases scored second in the list.

Some chronological changes in this procedure have resulted into development of new vaccine. The investigation of polio was at peak during 1950s and 1960s, and investigations related to small pox lasted from 1971 to 1975 and was reinitiated from 2001 to 2005. The epi aids declined significantly after 1975 particularly due to decline in diseases and increased immunization. The licence of measles vaccine was given in 1963 and it was funded by government in 1966. The vaccination assistance act was formulated in 1962. The increasing activities related to vaccine, immunizations, and recommendations accounted for $3.5 billion of cost in 2010.

EIS programs aimed at ensuring safety against adverse effects of vaccine, which was witnessed once in 1955 due to inadequate inactivated poliovirus while provision of vaccination to 192 persons. The EISOs also assessed the risk of paralysis caused by oral polio vaccination. In this regard a monitoring system was formed by EISO to assess and control the adverse events after immunization.

This effort resulted into decline of diseases by 95% that are curable by vaccination up till 1980. These investigations were conducted across states as well by EISOs. The results of many vaccine preventable diseases were not included in epi aids results and some of the ...