§ Dr. TongeTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what evidence he has assessed relating to the value of universal vaccination as a means of protecting the population against disease. [151313]
§ Miss Melanie JohnsonVaccination has been one of the most effective interventions along with improvements in clean water supplies and nutrition in reducing infectious diseases throughout the world. The introduction of vaccines in the United Kingdom against a number of childhood diseases, including whooping cough, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, haemophilus1072W influenzae type B (Hib), and diphtheria has lead to significant reductions or elimination (in the case of smallpox) of these diseases.
There are a number of good examples where the level of a disease has fallen following the introduction of an effective vaccine. Following the introduction of Hib in 1992, there was a 98 per cent. fall in the number of laboratory confirmed cases in children under five years of age. Similarly, the meningococcal C vaccine, introduced in November 1999, resulted in a reduction in the number of laboratory confirmed cases of meningococcal group C disease by around 95 per cent. in babies under 12 months of age. Oral polio vaccine has been extremely effective in eliminating poliomyelitis from the UK. Excellent progress towards worldwide eradication is being made, and the World Health Organisation hopes to have interrupted wild polio transmission by the end of 2005.