[Surveillance programmes to evaluate the effectiveness of vaccination programmes using vaccination against...

To evaluate the effectiveness of vaccination programmes, it is not only important to know the effectiveness of the specific vaccine itself but also to have knowledge about the epidemiology of the corresponding vaccine-preventable disease. Only a high acceptance of a vaccination programme by the population will show an effect at the population level (herd immunity). At the moment, data routinely collected in Germany are not sufficient to evaluate the effectiveness of vaccination programmes. Hence, additional surveillance programmes have to be initialised. The frequency of the vaccine-preventable disease in the population under surveillance determines mainly the design of the surveillance. In this article we describe the different requirements for surveillance programmes for common as well as for rare vaccine-preventable diseases. An example for the latter will be the ESPED study on the effectiveness of hexavalent vaccines against Haemophilus influenzae type b, an example for the first will be the varicella sentinel of the Working Group on Measles and Varicella. Both surveillance programmes for evaluation of the effectiveness of the respective vaccination programme are financed only partly by the public funds. We discuss the possible limitations of a funding from other sources.