Reference documents
This section offers a comprehensive library of downloadable PDF files relevant to immunization. It includes both published and unpublished material. The documents have been listed under the specific organizations that have produced them.
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You can also submit draft documents for review purposes. In this case, all communication should be undertaken with the author and/or organization submitting the document.
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The documents are listed alphabetically. Just click on the links below to access the required document.
WHO
The World Health Organization was established post World War II. Its constitution came into force on 7 April 1948 (celebrated as the World Health Day). “It is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. It is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends.”
GLOBAL IMMUNIZATION MEETING 2010
Project Optimize [pdf]
UNICEF
The United Nations Children’s Fund, originally known as the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, was established on 11 December 1946. Its initial agenda was to meet the food, clothing and health needs of children in post-war Europe. Over the years, its agenda has broadened to support the rights of children all over the world and its focus has shifted from health to additional areas like education. Immunization has been one of its thrust areas.
GLOBAL IMMUNIZATION MEETING 2009
The State of the World’s Children 2008: Child Survival
Children and the Millennium Development Goals: Progress towards A World Fit for Children
IMMUNIZATION
Annual Report 2006
Building Trust in Immunization: Partnering with Religious Leaders and Groups (2004)
Eliminating Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus (2004)
Facts for Life (2002)
Immunization Summary: The 2007 Edition
Pneumonia: The forgotten killer of children (2006)
Progress For Children: A Report Card on Immunization (No. 3) (2005)
The Child Survival Partnership (2004)
The End of Polio (2003)
UNICEF's Priorities for Children 2002-2005
Vaccines: Handled with Care (2004)
Vitamin A Supplementation: A decade of progress
GAVI
The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, now GAVI Alliance is a “unique partnership that combines public and private sector resources to strengthen health systems and bring the benefits of immunization to those in greatest need … .” It targets the poorest countries of the world and seeks to improve vaccination infrastructure, purchase newer vaccines and support research and development.
TechNet21
The Technical Network for health services focuses on logistics and training to improve operational efficiencies in the delivery of health services. It is a knowledge and experience and expertise sharing network with a special focus on immunization services delivery.
Technet Draft Documents for Review
Performance Quality and Safety Project
An important component to achieve success with EPI was reliable cold chain equipment. WHO’s EPI began working with manufacturers to produce low-cost equipment for storing and transporting vaccines. WHO also established a network of laboratories to standardize equipment and evaluate new equipment. By 1979, WHO (with UNICEF) started publishing Product Information Sheets (PIS) that listed equipment that met with WHO’s approval. With developments in the cold chain and changing economic scenarios, WHO felt the need for a new and more responsive approach, which has been defined in terms of Performance Quality and Safety. Equipment now has to fulfil all three criteria to be listed in the WHO-recommended equipment list.
BASICS
Basics was established in 1994. It partners with USAID to develop and implement newborn and child survival strategies. BASICS provides assistance to USAID Missions to scale up child health and nutrition interventions; strengthen health systems; expand the reach and effectiveness of health services; and operationalize new interventions.
Immunization Basics
A USAID/HIDN five-year project (2004−2009), ImmunizationBasics supports governments and collaborating agencies to deliver quality immunizations services and widen coverage by providing expert technical assistance
PATH
PATH is an international, nonprofit organization working with health through technology, strengthening health systems and advocacy of reform in health behaviour. PATH collaborates with diverse organizations in both the public and private sectors.
Malaria Vaccine Initiative
1. Public-sector preferences for RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine formulation, presentation, and packaging.
2. Vaccine Presentation Assessment Tool — Analytical approach and user guide
3. Vaccine Presentation Assessment Tool — MS Excel Worksheet
4. Vaccine Presentation Assessment Tool — MS Excel Worksheet Example
Abt Associates/Partnerships for Health Reform
Founded in 1965, Abt Associates is a research and consulting firm applying its expertise to a wide range of issues, including social, economic, and health policy; international development; clinical trials and registries. It has extensive experience in advising countries on health systems.
Of the 620,000 soldiers who perished during the American Civil War, the overwhelming majority died not from gunshot wounds or saber cuts, but from disease. And of the various maladies that plagued both armies, few were more pervasive than malaria—a mosquito-borne illness which afflicted over 1.1 million soldiers serving in the Union army alone. Yellow fever, another disease transmitted by mosquitoes, struck fear into the hearts of military planners who knew that “yellow jack” could wipe out an entire army in a matter of weeks. In this ground-breaking medical history, Andrew McIlwaine Bell explores the impact of these two terrifying mosquito-borne maladies on the major political and military events of the 1860s, revealing how deadly microorganisms carried by a tiny insect helped shape the course of the Civil War.
An authoritative, user-friendly guide to vaccination. Easy to navigate yet replete with up-to-date information, the "Purple Book" contains practical advice and background for the practitioner on vaccine infrastructure, standards and regulations, business aspects of vaccine practice, general recommendations, schedules, special circumstances, and how to address a patient's concerns about vaccines. Specific information about vaccine-preventable diseases, the rationale for vaccine use, and available products is included. The book is targeted to pediatricians, family practitioners, internists, obstetricians, residents, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants.
Globally, approximately one half of the population lives in rural areas, but less than 38% of the nurses and less than 25% of the physicians work there. While getting and keeping health workers in rural and remote areas is a challenge for all countries, the situation is worse in the 57 countries that have an absolute shortage of health workers.
After a year-long consultative effort, this document proposes sixteen evidence-based recommendations on how to improve the recruitment and retention of health workers in underserved areas. It also offers a guide for policy makers to choose the most appropriate interventions, and to implement, monitor and evaluate their impact over time.
In The Fever, the journalist Sonia Shah sets out to answer these questions, delivering a timely, inquisitive chronicle of the illness and its influence on human lives. Through the centuries, she finds, we’ve invested our hopes in a panoply of drugs and technologies, and invariably those hopes have been dashed. From the settling of the New World to the construction of the Panama Canal, through wars and the advances of the Industrial Revolution, Shah tracks malaria’s jagged ascent and the tragedies in its wake, revealing a parasite every bit as persistent as the insects that carry it.
In this book, Mark Pendergrast, a journalist by training, tries to present a comprehensive history of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS). He successfully tells the stories of the elite group, but in attempting to cover so many of the outbreaks in which they have been involved, he loses the essence of their story.
Why sex matters
The immune system is not bound by a single tissue but is instead bestowed with the challenge of warding off invading pathogens throughout the body. Constant surveillance of the body requires that the immune system be highly mobile and able to purge pathogens from all tissues. Because each tissue presents its own unique architecture and milieu, it is necessary for the immune system to be as malleable as it is dynamic. For example, how the immune system handles a pathogen in the lung can differ significantly from a pathogen encountered in the gut.
Dr Laura Kahn has produced a useful book that provides a brief historical background on public health and terrorism, followed by interesting examples of leadership during outbreaks and events that escalated to public health crises. The roles of astute clinicians, public health professionals, appointed public health leaders, and elected officials are described by the players themselves. These insights provide important perspectives and are fascinating reading, ....
World Health Statistics 2010 contains WHO's annual compilation of data from its 193 Member States, and includes a summary of progress towards the health-related Millennium Development Goals and targets. 
Working in Health addresses two key questions related to health workforce policy in developing countries:
On the 30th anniversary of WHO's announcement, two centuries or so after Edward Jenner's classic 1790s experiment with cowpox, Angel of Death recounts the fearsome history of smallpox—variola, from the Latin for pustule or pock, a term first used in AD 570 for a disease that surprisingly postdates the Bible and ancient Rome. Gareth Williams, a professor of medicine at the University of Bristol in the UK, lives in a village associated with the Jenner family. In lively prose with unpatronising insight into past medical dilemmas, he dramatises the scourge and its treatment first by variolation (immunisation with live smallpox virus) then vaccination, but also shows how controversial smallpox vaccination was during the 19th century.
Vaccines usually bring relief, since society no longer has to worry about scourges of the past. But there’s been concern that these lifesavers can harm some. Which vaccines are necessary for the common good, and when should they be given? Here is all the information readers need to know about every vaccine, including: how vaccines work; which are required and recommended; which have been challenged; risks of not vaccinating; vaccines for travelers, injuries, and special populations, including seniors.
Each year, around 9 million children die from preventable and treatable illnesses before reaching their fifth birthday. Many die during their first year of life. Countless more children live in precarious situations and face diminished futures. The handbook, Facts for Life, provides vital messages and information for mothers, fathers, other family members and caregivers and communities to use in changing behaviours and practices that can save and protect the lives of children and help them grow and develop to their full potential.
For more than three decades, Donde no hay doctor (Where There Is No Doctor in Spanish) has been changing the face of health care, and our newest updated edition for 2010 has arrived! With over three million copies in use in more than 200 countries, given to (and treasured by) many Peace Corps volunteers, Donde no hay doctor is the most widely used health care manual in the world. Health workers, villagers, school teachers, mothers, midwives, and others who understand the value of informed self-care depend on this simply written and generously illustrated book because it demystifies what doctors do and takes into account the political, social, and economic circumstances that people must consider when deciding how to take charge of their health. Donde no hay doctor is truly a book for everyone. 
The spread of disease throughout cities, countries, and the world relies on the spatial nature of transmission. Urban cities might face very different effects to rural communities, depending on the nature of the disease. Infections might cluster or they might move rapidly through modern transportation networks. At a smaller scale, an individual's social and travel networks might cause them to encounter infected individuals in a variety of ways.
Chronicling a 100-year quest, this book tells the fascinating story of the hunt for the still-elusive malaria vaccine. Its clear, engaging style makes the book accessible to a general audience and brings to life all the drama of the hunt, celebrating the triumphs and documenting the failures. 
This book is, as the subtitle states, a book about ethics and infectious disease and has as such become even more relevant in recent months where we have been threatened by an influenza pandemic.
The book is partitioned in four chapters like a research paper, with an introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion/conclusions section. When reading the introductory chapter it struck me that recent studies were not being referred to. The most recent reference dates back to 2005, which is odd for a book published in 2008. Regretfully, this resulted in inaccuracies or outdated information. For instance, the authors mention the possible effects of bednet use by infants on development of natural immunity whereas these risks have been studied since (notably, amongst others, by the same authors and are no longer considered an issue. Similarly, the relationship between the entomological inoculation rate (EIR) and malaria mortality, though fiercely debated in the late 1990s, pretty much ended with the publication by Tom Smith and colleagues in 2001. Such omissions may be confusing to readers not familiar with older publications. It was surprising to see that a whole book on environmental change and malaria risk, published in 2005; freely available online], with a contribution from Moshe Hoshen who supported the development of the model in this book, was not referred to. 
Half of the world's population is at risk of malaria, and an estimated 243 million cases led to nearly 863 000 deaths in 2008. The advent of long-lasting insecticidal nets and artemisinin-based combination therapy, plus a revival of support for indoor residual spraying of insecticide, presents a new opportunity for large-scale malaria control. The World malaria report 2009 describes the global distribution of cases and deaths, how WHO-recommended control strategies have been adopted and implemented in endemic countries, sources of funding for malaria control, and recent evidence that prevention and treatment can alleviate the burden of disease. 
In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child on 20 November 2009, UNICEF is dedicating a special edition of its flagship publication The State of the World’s Children to child rights. The report broadly assesses the Convention’s impact on children’s well-being and human development during the past two decades, addresses the critical challenges for the next 20 years and outlines an agenda for action to ensure the Convention’s promise becomes a reality for every child.
Pneumonia kills 1.8 million children under five years of age every year, more than any other illness, in every region of the world. In spite of its huge toll, relatively few global resources are dedicated to tackling this child killer. 
The State of the world's vaccines and immunization (Third edition) is a call to action to governments and donors to sustain and increase funding for immunization in order to build upon the progress made so far in meeting the global goals. It focuses on the major developments in vaccines and immunization since 2000.
“Political activism is needed once more to ensure that the next generation of drugs is available to the world's poorest”, according to a report from the UK All-Parliamentary Group on AIDS published last week. The Treatment Timebomb describes itself as an important wake-up call to those who think that successful delivery on the promise of universal access to HIV treatment can be achieved in the long term by just doing more of the same.
Dread is both reassuring and discomforting. Although Alcabes believes that there is no particular reason to expect another epidemic of influenza on the scale of 1918, he bluntly warns, on the basis of past epidemics, “Whatever disease causes the next great outbreak, we won't see it coming.”
For more than 3000 years, hundreds of millions of people have died or been left permanently scarred or blind by the relentless, incurable disease called smallpox. In 1967, Dr. D.A. Henderson became director of a worldwide campaign to eliminate this disease from the face of the earth.
"Factcines" is a book written for parents by Susan Shoshana Weisberg, MD, FCP, FAAP, a board certified pediatrician with over 25 years of clinical experience. The book presents facts and data on vaccines, vaccine-preventable diseases, and possible vaccine side effects in a neutral manner.
Some of the worst tropical diseases in the world have too long been ignored. Parasitic and bacterial diseases such as hookworm, snail fever, river blindness, guinea worm, elephantiasis, sleeping sickness, and leprosy are the most common infections of third-world populations. These neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) represent one of the most important reasons why populations living in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America remain caught in a vicious cycle of poverty, stigma, and despair.
Epidemiology and Prevention of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases, 11th Edition, (The Pink Book) published by the National Immunization Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The purpose of this book to provide guidance on measures to prevent or reduce any adverse consequences for the health of travellers.
This report is the 13th annual report on global control of tuberculosis (TB) published by the World Health Organization (WHO) in a series that started in 1997. Its main purpose is to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the TB epidemic and progress in controlling the disease at global, regional and country levels, in the context of global targets set for 2015. Results are based primarily on data reported to WHO via its standard TB data collection form in 2008 and on the data that were collected every year from 1996 to 2007. The 196 countries and territories that reported data in 2008 account for 99.6% of the world's estimated number of TB cases and 99.7% of the world's population.
An indispensable Resource for all Health Professionals who are Partners in the Management of Patients with Communicable Diseases 
This report provides an overview of the global distribution of malaria cases and deaths and documents how control strategies recommended by WHO have been adopted and implemented in endemic countries. It also includes information about sources of funding for malaria control.
The World Health Report 2008, was launched on 14 October 2008. It critically assesses the way that health care is organized, financed, and delivered in rich and poor countries around the world and highlights the inequities and inefficiencies that prevail The report, titled Primary health care – now more than ever, commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Alma-Ata International Conference on Primary Health Care held in 1978. That event was the first to put health equity on the international political agenda.
The threat constituted by the multiple outbreaks of avian influenza during the last few years urgently calls for the development of new influenza vaccines. Fortunately, a quantum leap in technology has revolutionized the study of influenza and the engineering of new vaccine strains by reverse genetics. This volume provides a historical background and state-of-the-art information about the recent advances in the biology of influenza and the design of new influenza vaccines.
Gathering thirteen essays by forty leading experts who convened at the Cary Conference at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in 2005, this book develops an integrated framework for understanding where these diseases come from, what ecological factors influence their impacts, and how they in turn influence ecosystem dynamics. It marks the first comprehensive and in-depth exploration of the rich and complex linkages between ecology and disease. 
2007 AIDS epidemic update