Immunizations in the United States

Abstract

Prevention of disease through the use of vaccines is one of the great success stories of public health and preventive medicine in the United States. Our success in reducing morbidity and mortality from diseases preventable by vaccine is comparable to, or better than, that of virtually any other country in the world. Table 1 shows the maximum reported incidence of diseases preventable by vaccine, the year in which that occurred, and the provisional total number of cases reported in 1989. There have been reductions of 90% or more in reported incidence of all of these diseases. Even though the 16 000 cases of measles reported in 1989 is the largest total since 1978, it still is less than 2% of the peak number. Notwithstanding this great success, there are serious deficits in our immunization program, although the situation is not as bad as one might surmise from the background paper, which does not take into account many factors such as differences in data sources, means of assessment, and surveillance systems. First, I describe the current situation, and then discuss some of the problems we face. The current US immunization schedule (Table 2) calls for a total of six visits for immunization between birth and school entry. Children should receive immunization during the first year of life, the second year, and the fifth or sixth year (just before entry to school). Thus, the population in need of services on an annual basis is three birth cohorts, or approximately 11 to 12 million children. Recent recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics for a second dose of measles vaccine to be administered at approximately 12 years of age call for another visit for vaccination and increase the number of children to receive vaccine in a given year to 15 to 16 million.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 22 citations exist upstream.