Building on the success of the Expanded Programme on Immunization: enhancing the focus on disease prevention and control

Abstract

The Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) has succeeded in establishing a vaccine delivery system in all low and middle income (LMI) countries. Because EPI has focused on immunization delivery, its major outcome is measured in many countries only as vaccine coverage, not as disease reduction, the real goal of EPI. Monitoring disease reduction requires real-time case-based disease surveillance and appropriate interventions, for which a functional public health infrastructure is needed. If the highest priority for assessing impact of EPI shifts to disease prevention and control from vaccine coverage, the programme may be transformed to one of control of childhood communicable diseases (CCCD), with the potential of expanding the range of diseases of children and adults for control and of integrating all other current vertical (single disease) control efforts with it. EPI provides the essential platform on which CCCD can be built to create a public health infrastructure.