Child vaccination helps the whole population

Vaccination.Photo: Cornelius Poppe / NTB scanpix

After the pneumococcal vaccine became a part of the child vaccine program, the number of people who have been attacked by the disease has dropped significantly, even among adults.

Before the vaccine became a part of the program in 2006, over 100 children were seriously ill with pneumococcal bacteria every year. In 2015 this number had dropped to 15. For the population as a whole, the number of people attacked by the disease has halved, NRK reported.
– If we look at the numbers for  all the age groups combined, the number of attacks has been reduced from about one thousand to five hundred. The largest decline has been among adults over 65 years of age,  Didrik Vestrheim, who is director of the department for vaccine preventable diseases at the NIPH, says. He has written a doctoral thesis onpneumococcal vaccine and is not surprised that it has a good effect also among those who have not received the vaccine.
– We expected this to happen, but we had no idea how large this reduction would be.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today