Further Ensuring Vaccine Safety

By Jin Paul De Guzman

While all readily available vaccines have undergone strict testing prior to release, it is necessary to regularly monitor how they work in a larger, more heterogeneous population. This is done to evaluate not merely vaccine efficacy but safety as well. This led to the enactment of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 in the United States. By 1990 the US Department of Health and Human Services established the Vaccine Adverse Events Report System (VAERS), which operates under the care of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Food and Drug Administration.

    VAERS reports between 800 and 1,000 cases of adverse events following vaccinations every month. About one percent of the total cases reported annually result in death. Current estimates say that only about 10 percent of all adverse events post-vaccination are being reported.

    However, it must be stressed that adverse events cannot always be causally related to vaccinations. As is usually the case, these adverse events are merely coincidental to the administration of the vaccine. Explains the CDC: "[In the United States,] over ten million vaccinations per year are given to children less than one year old, usually between 2 months and 6 months of age. At this age, infants are at greatest risk for certain medical events, including high fevers, seizures, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Some infants will by coincidence experience such an event shortly after a vaccination. These coincidences make it difficult to know whether a particular adverse event resulted from a concurrent condition or from a vaccination. Therefore, doctors and other vaccine providers are encouraged to report all adverse events following vaccinations, whether or not they believe that the vaccination was the cause." Jin Paul De Guzman