Impact of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines on the incidence of pneumonia in hospitalized children after five years of its introduction in Uruguay.

Background: Data on the burden of pneumococcal disease and the most frequent serotypes demonstrated that invasive disease and pneumonia were important manifestations affecting children under 5 years of age. Therefore, pneumococcal diseases prevention became a public health priority. Uruguay was the first Latin American country to incorporate PCV7 into its National Immunization Program.

Hospitalized children with pneumonia in Uruguay: pre and post introduction of 7 and 13-valent pneumococcal conjugated vaccines into the National Immunization Program.

Introduction: Streptococcus pneumoniae pneumonia burden in children was poorly defined in Uruguay. A three-year population-based surveillance demonstrated the impact of the pneumonia in hospitalized children of less than five years of age. To control these diseases in March 2008, Uruguayan health authorities decided to incorporate PCV7 to the National Immunization Program administered at 2, 4 and 12 months of age (2+1 schedule).

Assessment of the quality of immunization data produced by the national individual registration system in Uruguay, 2006.

Objective: The nominal registration system of Uruguay's national immunization program (NIP) tracks administered vaccines on a paper form filled out after each vaccination and collated into a national database, thus allowing for individual follow-up. This study performed a comprehensive assessment of the quality of Uruguay's immunization data in November 2006 to evaluate the validity of the information and to confirm the high national immunization coverage reported by the program.

Methods: The research team analyzed the concordance of the operational-level numerators (infant immunization data from 18 public and private vaccination centers in six country departments) with department- and national-level data, and compared the national-level (NIP) infant denominators with other official sources.