The Social and Spatial Stratification of Vaccinal Patterns in Berlin Following Re‐Unification

Abstract

Efforts by health authorities to stress the importance of herd immunity in the light of a resurgence of seemingly vanquished childhood diseases have frequently met with poor response rates. Investigating whether reunified Berlin can achieve a desirable herd immunity of 80% ‐ 85% against diphtheria, this paper examines the potential influence of socio‐demographic variables (age, gender, social circumstances, migration background) on vaccine‐uptake. Secondly, it investigates historically diverging vaccinal policies in Berlin as well as recent changes to monitoring coverage in their effect on immunisation‐related behaviour.

Celebrities, cows and contagious ideas about vaccines

“…Why is it that the MMR, HPV and H1N1 vaccines have led to public hesitancy and in some cases public outrage while the altruistic introduction of an oral polio vaccine to all children in order to protect (relatively few) immunocompromised children from polio was a huge success [1]? Why was uptake of the measles vaccine still higher among former Eastern Germans than among former Western Germans even years after the fall of the Berlin wall [2–4]? Paradoxically, the success of vaccination programs may itself lead to increasing vaccine hesitancy as the disease will increasingly be seen as a low threat because of the longer spells between outbreaks [5].…”