Summary

You have now completed the learning for this module. These are the main points that you have learned.

• With the exception of water safety, vaccines have the greatest potential to promote public health. They reduce morbidity and mortality from infectious disease, saving costs as well as lives.
• Public trust in vaccines is easily undermined: there is a lower tolerance for adverse events than for other prescribed drugs.
• The five categories of AEFIs are:
  1. Vaccine product-related reaction,
  2. Vaccine quality defect-related reaction,
  3. Immunization error-related reaction,
  4. Immunization anxiety-related reaction,
  5. Coincidental event.
• Vaccines generate an immune response in the body, and the characteristics of a vaccine that increase the risk of an adverse reaction.
• The four main types of vaccine are live attenuated, inactivated, subunit and toxoid and there are specific vaccines of each antigen type.
• Vaccines are regulated from development, to licensure, to use, and national regulatory authorities play an important role in this process.
• Post-licensure surveillance of a vaccine after its introduction to the market is critical as clinical trials may not detect rare or very rare reactions, or reactions with delayed onset.
• The risks associated with vaccines are very low compared with the risks of the diseases they are designed to prevent.