Decisions around vaccination

‘We can't change the past but this vaccine will change people's futures.’ These were the words of Kelly Mellor, whose daughter contracted meningococcal disease when she was 11 months old, quoted in a news release announcing that as of 1 September 2015, the meningococcal B (MenB) vaccine would be added to the NHS childhood immunisation programme in England (Public Health England, 2015a).

Public Health England (PHE, 2015b) has also urged pregnant women to get immunised against whooping cough, with figures showing 1744 cases of the disease notified to the end of June 2015, compared to 1412 for the same period last year. These recent examples show how research and surveillance can be translated both into the production of new vaccines, as with MenB, and trigger warnings to encourage vaccine uptake. These developments, however, must be tempered with a realisation that more remains to be done. Larson (2015) offers a global perspective, stating that approximately 600 000 neonates still do not survive infections every year.