Improving Health through Elimination and Eradication of Vaccine Preventable Diseases

Abstract

The last two centuries have seen an extraordinary reduction in the morbidity and mortality due to infectious diseases as a result of improvements in health and hygiene-related conditions and the introduction of vaccinations. Vaccines against infectious diseases with a human reservoir can have the following beneficial effects : control, elimination, eradica- tion and extinction of the disease. Vaccines have facilitated the eradication of smallpox in 1980 and a massive reduction in cases of poliomyelitis, of which only 1,655 were recorded worldwide in 2008. The elimination of poliomyelitis in the European region was certified by the WHO in 2002. The essential conditions for the elimination of communicable diseases are political commitment, the implementation of vaccination programmes and exhaustive disease surveillance.