Surveillance standards for vaccine-preventable diseases, 2nd edition

Overview

The purpose of this document is to provide World Health Organization (WHO)-recommended standards for conducting surveillance for vaccine preventable diseases (VPDs). VPD surveillance provides vital information to help countries understand disease burden and epidemiology to inform vaccine policy and strategy. This document is intended to provide a set of standards that countries should consider in establishing and improving existing VPD surveillance. Countries may adapt these standards based on local epidemiology, policy, disease control objectives and strategies. While the primary audiences of this document are country programme managers, it is important to recognize that standardized global surveillance data are useful for developing global vaccination policy.

These guidelines are not intended to be comprehensive for all aspects of VPDs. This document does not include step-by-step surveillance protocols, detailed laboratory methods, templates for line lists or databases, recommendations for monitoring adverse events following immunization or guidance on vaccination coverage surveys. In addition, details on routine immunization schedules will not be given here but may be found on the WHO website.