The European Region has set a goal to eradicate measles by 2015, but in recent years we have seen rising rates of this disease in several countries. In the article ‘Measles: Back to the Future of Public Health?’ David Katz talks about the reasons behind such outbreaks and explains how the actual success of vaccines can sometimes be their own worst enemy. He writes, “Why is it we are apathetic about vaccines, and less concerned about the diseases they prevent than with the side effects they…

Have a look at the conversation between David Walliams and Bill Gates, where Bill Gates among other things tells about the delivery of vaccines in poor countries; the huge reduction in death among children younger than 5 over the last decades and GAVI's pledging conference last year.

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WHO/Europe's Vaccine-preventable diseases and Immunization programme has launched an online Immunization Resource Centre ahead of EIW 2012. The documents contained in this Resource Centre are designed to assist health professionals in their day-to-day work as it relates to immunization. Some of the resources are meant specifically for health workers, for information and training purposes. Others are meant to be shared by health workers with patients, in order to provide them with…

Generations of children have grown up singing the music and lyrics of Richard and Robert Sherman who wrote, among other things, the song “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down" for the magical Mary Poppins. The idea for these lyrics actually originated from the oral polio vaccine, as the brothers revealed in an interview in 2005:

Robert's son had just been given the polio vaccine. "I said, 'Oh, did…