Hepatitis B control in Europe by universal vaccination programmes: The situation in 2001

Abstract

In the nine years since the Global Advisory Group of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (WHO) set 1997 as the target for integrating hepatitis B vaccination into national immunisation programmes worldwide, 129 countries have included hepatitis B vaccine as part of their routine infant or adolescent immunisation programmes (June 2001). By the end of 2002, 41 out of the 51 countries of the WHO European Region will be implementing universal hepatitis B immunisation. The rewards of effective implementation of the programmes in countries that started 10 years ago are becoming apparent; and their success offers an exemplary model for other countries. Some other countries, however, have difficulties to incorporate hepatitis B vaccine into universal childhood immunisation programmes, because of major economic constrains and the inability to procure a constant vaccine supply. The next decade will be characterised by expanded use of hepatitis B vaccines and the increasing efforts to sustain vaccine programmes and make the vaccine available to those countries and regions that cannot afford it. In Europe, as well as in the rest of the world, work still remains to be done to support and implement interventions that will bring us closer to the WHO goal and to eradicate hepatitis B.

The burden and recent epidemiological changes of the main chronic liver diseases in a Greek referral tertiary centre

“…This might be because of the reported declining prevalence of chronic HBV infection in Greece [3][4][5][6], which is probably associated with the improvements of the socioeconomic status and the immunization policy in our country over the last decades. Similar changes of HBV epidemiology have been observed in many other European countries [12]. The reduction of the proportion of new chronic HBV patients at our centre would have been greater if immigrants, who were more frequent among chronic HBV patients compared with any other group, were excluded.…”

Immunisation in the current management of cystic fibrosis patients

“…Generally, hepatitis B vaccination is implemented in national schedules except in some countries with a low prevalence. WHO recommends the inclusion of hepatitis B vaccination into all national immunisation programmes [14,24,25].…”

A comparison of hepatitis B seroepidemiology in ten European countries

“…The prevalence of HBsAg, which is influenced primarily by the age at infection, has been used to categorize endemicity as high (o8 %), intermediate (2-8 %), low (<2 %) [3] or very low (<0 . 5%) [4]. In Europe, there are wide variations in reported HBsAg carriage, increasing west to east and north to south [3].…”