The history of vaccination and current vaccination policies in Korea

ABSTRACT

There may be many reasons for the significant decrease in the incidence of the pediatric infectious diseases in modern Korea; this could be due to the improvement of sanitary facilities, significant growth of Korean economy, improvement of nutrition, development and dissemination of antibiotics and implantation of vaccination, and overall improvement of medical technology. The development of vaccination has been highlighted as a striking achievement of the modern medical sciences with new technologies in many fields of medicine. Since 1876, the method for vaccination has opened its new era by Suk-Young Jee, known as the Jenner in Korea who wrote a book about smallpox vaccination, and it led an opportunity to propagate the needs for the vaccination in Korea. There was a time when pediatric wards were full of patients with parasitic diseases and many vaccine-preventable diseases such as diphtheria, pertussis, Japanese B encephalitis, and poliomyelitis in 1950s-1960s. We do not see those infectious diseases that often any more in recent years. However, we still have patients with water-borne diseases and other communicable diseases related to increasing international travels. We just experienced the first pandemic influenza of the 21st century in 2009 and avian influenza is still a threat to humans in other parts of the world with an unpredictable potential of pandemicity. In addition, we have tough battles with emerging antibiotic resistance in many strains of bacteria and increased opportunistic infections due to improvement of medical technology involving more aggressive treatment modality and use of medical devices. Researches in many areas are under way and we hope that some of them may be preventable and decreased with a development of new vaccines in the future.