From the Journals

Children in Taiwan being undervaccinated for pertussis

Publish date: January 5, 2017
By
Abigail Cruz

 

FROM HUMAN VACCINES & IMMUNOTHERAPEUTICS

Up to one-fifth of pertussis cases in Taiwanese children aged 3-35 months from 1996 to 2012 could have been prevented with on-time vaccination, reported Wan-Ting Huang and coauthors at the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control, Taipei.

Although vaccination coverage was 97.4% for three or more pertussis vaccine doses among Taiwanese children aged 12-23 months, many had not received proper vaccination at the right time.

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The study used the Taiwanese National Immunization Information System (NIIS) database to evaluate a retrospective cohort of children born between 1996 and 2012 and their vaccination records; each child was followed until the age of 36 months or death. The results showed that of 4,104,526 children born between 1996 and 2012, 61% were undervaccinated with DTwP (whole-cell pertussis vaccine, combined with diphtheria and tetanus toxoids) or DTaP. Of those with a delay in vaccination, 30% were undervaccinated for more than 6 months; 23% of cases of pertussis were attributed to undervaccination.

“The study indicated that in Taiwan, undervaccination was decreasing but had placed young children at risk for pertussis,” the authors wrote.

Read the full study from Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics (2016. doi: 10.1080/21645515.2016.1249552).

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