Vaccine safety - improving monitoring

The growing numbers of vaccines and vaccine combinations make monitoring of vaccine safety increasingly complex. At the same time, health agencies and the public request better information on the safety of vaccines. The following steps should be taken to improve monitoring of vaccine safety: bar code labelling of vaccines to improve accuracy and completeness of information on administered vaccines, establishing immunisation registers to provide numerator data on exposure to vaccines, to facilitate long term follow-up and to do linked database studies. Development of improved case definitions to increase comparability between studies. Organising systematic assessments of all information on suspect or alleged vaccine reactions. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.