Guest edited by Shenglan Tang, Shu Chen, Anna Du, Lance E. Rodewald
A thematic series in Infectious Diseases of Poverty.
Since its establishment in 1978, the national immunization program (NIP) in China has made remarkable achievements in the control and prevention of vaccine-preventable diseases. The coverage of the NIP, with 14 vaccines for 15 diseases, has reached more than 95% of children under six years older at the national level. However, the list of vaccines delivered free of charge in China has not been meaningfully expanded since 2008, although WHO has highly recommended several vaccines, such as PCV, HPV, Hib, and Rotavirus vaccines. Therefore, access to those non-NIP vaccines varies a great deal among different socio-economic development areas and in different socio-economic groups of China. With the support from the BMGF, the Innovation Lab for Vaccine Delivery Research in China, hosted at the Global Health Research Center of Duke Kunshan University, China, with a technical hub from Duke Global Health Institute, has worked with a number of leading Chinese universities, think-tanks, and disease control agencies to undertake several research projects on financing, organization/provision, and management of vaccine delivery in China over the past two years.
This thematic series from Infectious Diseases of Poverty features new findings emanating from these projects, and also introduce several case studies in China and other Asian countries where pilot studies in introducing new vaccines have taken place.
