Abstract

The most effective way to prevent infectious diseases is active immunisation; thus high vaccination coverage has a major impact on prevalence of vaccine-preventable diseases. When designing vaccine programs most countries including Estonia rely on the WHO recommendations. This paper aims to describe the current epidemiological situation of vaccine preventable diseases in Europe and  in Estonia and gives an overview of available vaccines.
The pro’s and contras of various vaccines and immunisation schedules are described and the potential benefits of combination vaccines are discussed. Potential future trends are at the end of each chapter.