Adult Vaccination

Adult vaccination should no longer be considered a luxury for developed countries. Instead, we must view how lifelong immunisation can have an important public health role in reducing vaccine preventable diseases and their sequelae. In Singapore, we do not have an “official” adult immunisation schedule and many of the references and recommendations that I will discuss come from the United States where such recommendations have been in existence for many years. Travel vaccinations are being considered in a separate article in this series. The “routine” adult vaccinations are against: Influenza, pneumococcal infection, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, varicella zoster, human papilloma virus, measles, mumps, and rubella.