Evidence-based National Vaccine Policy.

Abstract
India has over a century old tradition of development and production of vaccines. The Government rightly adopted self-sufficiency in vaccine production and self-reliance in vaccine technology as its policy objectives in 1986. However, in the absence of a full-fledged vaccine policy, there have been concerns related to demand and supply, manufacture vs. import, role of public and private sectors, choice of vaccines, new and combination vaccines, universal vs. selective vaccination, routine immunization vs. special drives, cost-benefit aspects, regulatory issues, logistics etc. The need for a comprehensive and evidence based vaccine policy that enables informed decisions on all these aspects from the public health point of view brought together doctors, scientists, policy analysts, lawyers and civil society representatives to formulate this policy paper for the consideration of the Government. This paper evolved out of the first ever ICMR-NISTADS national brainstorming workshop on vaccine policy held during 4-5 June, 2009 in New Delhi, and subsequent discussions over email for several weeks, before being adopted unanimously in the present form.
Description
Keywords
Combination, cost-benefit, epidemiology, immunization, policy, private, public, public health, UIP, vaccine
Citation
Madhavi Y, Puliyel Jacob M, Mathew Joseph L, Raghuram N, Phadke Anant, Shiva Mira, Srinivasan S, Paul Yash, Srivastava R N, Parthasarathy A, Gupta Sunil, Ranga Udaykumar, Lakshmi V Vijaya, Joshi Nayana, Nath Indira, Gulhati C M, Chatterjee Prabir, Jain Anuradha, Priya Ritu, Dasgupta Rajib, Sridhar S, Dabade Gopal, Gopakumar K M, Abrol Dinesh, Santhosh M R, Srivastava Sadhana, Visalakshi S, Bhargava Anurag, Sarojini N B, Sehgal Devinder, Selvaraj Sakthivel, Banerji D. Evidence-based National Vaccine Policy. Indian Journal of Medical Research. 2010 May; 131(5): 617-628.