Vaccination policies: individual rights v community health
- 4 December 1999
- Vol. 319 (7223), 1448-1449
- https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.319.7223.1448
Abstract
The goal of a rubella vaccine programme is to reduce the occurrence of the congenital rubella syndrome. In this week's BMJ, Panagiotopoulos et al describe the history of the use of rubella vaccine in Greece and show that partial vaccine coverage led to a period in which susceptibility to rubella among childbearing women was actually increased (p 1462).1 Therefore in 1993, an epidemic year for rubella in Greece, the incidence of rubella in childbearing women was higher than in previous epidemics, and the incidence of congenital rubella increased. What lessons can we learn from this failure?Keywords
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