Influenza

Mandatory Vaccination of Japanese Schoolchildren Demonstrates "Herd Immunity"

Published in Vaccine Weekly, April 11th, 2001

by N.R. Saltmarsh, staff medical writer - During a 25-year period when most Japanese children were immunized against influenza, fewer elderly people died from the disease.

That lower mortality rate was likely due to a "herd immunity" generated by the mass vaccination of schoolchildren, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Thomas A. Reichert and colleagues reviewed nearly half a century of data from before, during, and after the 1962-1987 period when most students received the vaccine. In 1987 Japan relaxed the vaccination mandate that had been in place for more than a decade, and after it was repealed in 1994,...

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Source: Vaccine Weekly (2001-04-11)

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