The GEMKAP study (2023) unveiled consistent knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) levels across Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Latin America (LATAM) countries regarding dengue, with variations in the willingness to vaccinate. Despite an overall KAP parity, the disparities within and between the countries indicated the need for both overarching and tailored strategies. Population-wide gaps in dengue awareness result in suboptimal vaccination priorities and preventive measures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: The COVID-19 pandemic changed the adult vaccination landscape, possibly permanently. This review attempts to quantitate the magnitude of those changes.
Methods: PubMed was searched for studies on adult / life-course vaccination between 1 January 2020 until 8 November 2022.
Worldwide, chronic diseases (noncommunicable diseases [NCDs]) cause 41 million (71%) deaths annually. They are the leading cause of mortality in India, contributing to 60% of total deaths each year. Individuals with these diseases are more susceptible to vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs) and have an increased risk of associated disease severity and complications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOver the last 50 years, the Indian population aged 50 years and above (older adults) has quadrupled and is expected to comprise 404 million people in 2036, representing 27% of the country's projected population. Consequently, the contribution of chronic disease to older adults' total burden of diseases in India is likely to escalate. Disease burden is notably amplified by immunosenescence, a deterioration of the immune system that develops with age, leading to increasing susceptibility to infectious diseases and other comorbidities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the original publication, the fourth author name was incorrectly published as Jayant Ray.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVaccines have contributed substantially to decreasing the morbidity and mortality rates of many infectious diseases worldwide. Despite this achievement, an increasing number of parents have adopted hesitant behaviours towards vaccines, delaying or even refusing their administration to children. This has implications not only on individuals but also society in the form of outbreaks for e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFToday, fewer children die each year from vaccine-preventable diseases than older adults. Health systems need new immunization strategies to tackle the burden of vaccine-preventable disease in an aging society. A life-course immunization (LCI) approach-which entails vaccination throughout an individual's lifespan-enables adults to age with reduced risk to disease, thereby enabling healthy, active and productive aging.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Despite the existence of efficacious vaccines, the burden of vaccine-preventable diseases remains high and the potential health benefits of paediatric, adolescent and adult vaccination are not being achieved due to suboptimal vaccine coverage rates. Based on emerging evidence that pharmacy-based vaccine interventions are feasible and effective, the European Interdisciplinary Council for Ageing (EICA) brought together stakeholders from the medical and pharmacy professions, the pharmaceutical industry, patient/ageing organisations and health authorities to consider the potential for pharmacy-based interventions to increase vaccine uptake. We report here the proceedings of this 3-day meeting held in March 2018 in San Servolo island, Venice, Italy, focussing firstly on examples from countries that have introduced pharmacy-based vaccination programmes, and secondly, listing the barriers and solutions proposed by the discussion groups.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAs populations age globally, the health of older adults is looming larger on the agendas of public health bodies. In particular, the priority is to ensure that older adults remain healthy, independent, and engaged in their communities. In other words, ensuring that increasing life spans are matched by increasing "health spans," meaning years spent in good health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite vast improvements in childhood vaccination coverage in India, adult vaccination coverage is negligible. Our aim was, therefore, to create awareness about the importance of adult immunization. Although the true burden of vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs) among Indian adults is unknown, adults are particularly vulnerable during outbreaks, due to a lack of immunization, waning immunity, age-related factors (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdjuvant Systems (AS) are combinations of immune stimulants that enhance the immune response to vaccine antigens. The first vaccine containing an AS (AS04) was licensed in 2005. As of 2018, several vaccines containing AS04, AS03 or AS01 have been licensed or approved by regulatory authorities in some countries, and included in vaccination programs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBarriers to vaccination and the important role of healthcare professionals (HCPs) in influencing immunization decisions made by parents/patients have been well documented. Little information describes challenges that HCPs face in carrying out their role as vaccinators. We conducted a focus group study asking HCPs to describe their expectations as frontline vaccinators versus the day-to-day reality they faced.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExtending the benefits of vaccination against infectious diseases from childhood throughout the entire life-span is becoming an increasingly urgent priority in view of the world's aging population, emergence and reemergence of infectious diseases, and the necessity to invest more on prevention versus cure in global healthcare. Areas covered: This perspective discusses how life-course immunization could benefit human health at all stages of life. To achieve this, the current vaccination paradigm should be changed and all stakeholders have a role to play.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Populations are aging worldwide. This paper summarizes some of the challenges and opportunities due to the increasing burden of infectious diseases in an aging population.
Results: Older adults typically suffer elevated morbidity from infectious disease, leading to increased demand for healthcare resources and higher healthcare costs.
Vaccines are different from most medicines in that they are administered to large and mostly healthy populations including infants and children, so there is a low tolerance for potential risks or side-effects. In addition, the long-term benefits of immunisation in reducing or eliminating infectious diseases may induce complacency due to the absence of cases. However, as demonstrated in recent measles outbreaks in Europe and United States, reappearance of the disease occurs as soon as vaccine coverage falls.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdjuvants are substances added to vaccines to improve their immunogenicity. Used for more than 80 years, aluminum, the first adjuvant in human vaccines, proved insufficient to develop vaccines that could protect against new challenging pathogens such as HIV and malaria. New adjuvants and new combinations of adjuvants (Adjuvant Systems) have opened the door to the delivery of improved and new vaccines against re-emerging and difficult pathogens.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdjuvants are used to improve vaccine immunogenicity and efficacy by enhancing antigen presentation to antigen-specific immune cells with the aim to confer long-term protection against targeted pathogens. Adjuvants have been used in vaccines for more than 90 years. Combinations of immunostimulatory molecules, such as in the Adjuvant System AS01, have opened the way to the development of new or improved vaccines.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe concept of stimulating the body's immune response is the basis underlying vaccination. Vaccines act by initiating the innate immune response and activating antigen presenting cells (APCs), thereby inducing a protective adaptive immune response to a pathogen antigen. Adjuvants are substances added to vaccines to enhance the immunogenicity of highly purified antigens that have insufficient immunostimulatory capabilities, and have been used in human vaccines for more than 90 years.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdjuvants mainly interact with the innate immune response and are used to enhance the quantity and quality of the downstream adaptive immune response to vaccine antigens. Establishing the safety of a new adjuvant-antigen combination is achieved through rigorous evaluation that begins in the laboratory, and that continues throughout the vaccine life-cycle. The strategy for the evaluation of safety pre-licensure is guided by the disease profile, vaccine indication, and target population, and it is also influenced by available regulatory guidelines.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA clinical trial with four groups receiving either 0.6, 3.5, 10 or 20 micro g of purified non-adsorbed hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) was performed to study the kinetics as well as the capacity of the immune memory to respond following exposure to HBsAg in responders to a complete course of hepatitis B vaccine, in whom anti-HBs titres had declined below the seroprotective level.
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