PERSPECTIVES
Immunisation
Should universal hepatitis B immunisation be introduced in the UK?
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr P English
Surrey & Sussex Health Protection Unit, Century House, 26 Bridge Street, Leatherhead KT22 8BZ, UK; peter.english@shpu.nhs.uk
Accepted 11 January 2006
Yes. But how?
Keywords: economic evaluation; hepatitis B; vaccination
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
A colleague working at a nearby desk groaned the other day. I asked why, and he told me that he’d just received a laboratory notification for a child who had been identified as needing a course of neonatal hepatitis B vaccine. It appeared that the system had failed, the vaccination hadn’t been completed, and the child had become infected. Selective vaccination is not totally reliable.
So, should we have a universal vaccination programme? Before answering, we need to know:
- How important is the disease that you would prevent?
- How much of the disease would a universal vaccination programme prevent?
- What would be the costs of a vaccination programme?
- What costs would the vaccination programme prevent?
- How do the costs of the programme compare with the costs prevented?
If the costs saved exceed the costs of vaccination, the programme is worth introducing. That’s the principle—in practice getting clear answers can
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Mackie, C. O. MD MHSc, Buxton, J. A. MBBS MHSc, Tadwalkar, S. MD BHSc, Patrick, D. M. MD MHSc
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Pollard, A. J
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