Newer vaccines in the Universal Immunisation Programme.

ABSTRACT

Vaccines are important preventive medicines for primary healthcare and critical for a nation’s health security. In India the Universal Programme of Immunization (UPI), launched in 1985, included six childhood vaccines. A well thought out immunisation schedule must be epidemiologically relevant to the country’s health status, covering only diseases that are public health problems and for which effective vaccines are available. There has been pressure from the drug industry to include all newly developed vaccines in the government’s UIP, even though the clinical and epidemiological justification for their inclusion is debated. Many developed countries have included several other new vaccines in their regular immunisation programmes.