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Vaccination

Answer

The Department and NHS England, advised by Public Health England, have produced a series of service specifications for the commissioning of immunisation services. These generally state that local services must ensure that they maintain and improve immunisation uptake with the aspiration of 100% of relevant individuals being offered immunisation.

The local Directors’ of Public Health have responsibility for providing appropriate challenge to local immunisation arrangements and advocacy with key stakeholders to ensure access to vaccinations improved uptake by eligible populations.

Coverage for most routine universal childhood immunisation programmes has improved over the last decade and is now approaching or above 95% in most English regions and continues to increase at a national level. Vaccine uptake in the UK is among the highest in the world. Annual immunisation coverage statistics are published by the Health and Social Care Information Centre and a copy of the most recent report for 2012-13 has been placed in the Library.

Public Health England monitors vaccine coverage levels and works jointly with the NHS to encourage increased vaccination uptake, including through promoting vaccination to parents and carers through advertising and media campaigns.

Public Health England defines outbreaks according to the World Health Organisation’s definition, which is that ‘A disease outbreak is the occurrence of cases of disease in excess of what would normally be expected in a defined community, geographical area or season’.

Cases of vaccine preventable disease are at historically low levels and in the last 10 years, national outbreaks have only been observed for three vaccine preventable diseases – mumps, pertussis and measles.

During the early years of the century, for example, vaccine coverage of measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) fell following the unfounded concerns about vaccine safety. In 2008, the Chief Medical Officer announced a national catch-up campaign to offer MMR to any individuals under 18 years of age to ensure they were fully protected. In April 2013, a national MMR catch up campaign in those aged 10 to 16 years was launched in England.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

207575

Session

2014-15

Attachment

Report

Related items

Deposited Paper DEP2014-1261
Monday, 8 September 2014
Deposited papers
House of Commons

Grouped for answer

Yes

Subjects

Vaccination

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk