Vaccination policy
A vaccination policy is a health policy adopted in order to prevent the spread of infectious disease. These policies are generally put into place by state or local governments, but may also be set by private facilities, such as workplaces or schools. Many policies have been developed and implemented since vaccines were first made widely available.
The main purpose of implementing a vaccination policy is complete eradication of a disease, as was done with smallpox. This, however, can be a difficult feat to accomplish or even confirm. Many governmental public health agencies rely on vaccination policies to create a herd immunity within their populations. Immunization advisory committees are usually responsible for providing those in leadership positions with information used to make evidence-based decisions regarding vaccines and other health policies.
Vaccination policies vary from country to country, with some mandating them and others strongly recommending them. Some places only require them for people utilizing government services, like welfare or public schools. A government or facility may pay for all or part of the costs of vaccinations, such as in a national vaccination schedule, or job requirement. Cost-benefit analyses of vaccinations have shown that there is an economic incentive to implement policies, as vaccinations save the State time and money by reducing the burden preventable diseases and epidemics have on healthcare facilities and funds.
Goals
Individual and herd immunity
Vaccination policies aim to produce immunity to preventable diseases. Besides individual protection from getting ill, some vaccination policies also aim to provide the community as a whole with herd immunity. Herd immunity refers to the idea that the pathogen will have trouble spreading when a significant part of the population has immunity against it, reducing the effect an infectious disease has on society. This protects those unable to get the vaccine due to medical conditions, such as immune disorders. However, for herd immunity to be effective in a population, a majority of those who are vaccine-eligible must be vaccinated.Vaccine-preventable diseases remain a common cause of childhood mortality with an estimated three million deaths each year. Every year, vaccination prevents between two and three million deaths worldwide, across all age groups, from diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and measles.
Eradication of diseases
With some vaccines, a goal of vaccination policies is to eradicate the diseasedisappear it from Earth altogether. The World Health Organization coordinated the effort to eradicate smallpox globally through vaccination, the last naturally occurring case of smallpox was in Somalia in 1977. Endemic measles, mumps and rubella have been eliminated through vaccination in Finland. On 14 October 2010, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization declared that rinderpest had been eradicated. The WHO is currently working to eradicate polio, which was eliminated in Africa in August 2020 and remained only in Pakistan and Afghanistan at the time.Individual versus group goals
The likely behavior of individuals when offered vaccines can be modeled economically using ideas from game theory. According to such models, individuals will attempt to minimize the risk of illness, and may seek vaccination for themselves or their children if they perceive a high threat of disease and a low risk to vaccination. However, if a vaccination program successfully reduces the disease threat, it may reduce the perceived risk of disease enough so that an individual's optimal strategy is to encourage everyone but their family to be vaccinated, or to refuse vaccination once vaccination rates reach a certain level, even if this level is below that optimal for the community. For example, a 2003 study predicted that a bioterrorist attack using smallpox would result in conditions where voluntary vaccination would be unlikely to reach the optimum level for the U.S. as a whole, and a 2007 study predicted that severe influenza epidemics cannot be prevented by voluntary vaccination without offering certain incentives.Governments often allow exemptions to mandatory vaccinations for religious or philosophical reasons, but decreased rates of vaccination may cause loss of herd immunity, substantially increasing risks even to vaccinated individuals. However, mandatory vaccination policies raise ethical issues regarding parental rights and informed consent.
Fractional dose vaccination is a strategy that trades societal benefit for individual vaccine efficacy, has proven to be effective in randomized trials in poverty diseases, and in epidemiologic models was thought to hold a significant potential for shortening the COVID-19 pandemic when vaccine supply is limited.
Compulsory vaccination
At various times, governments and other institutions have established policies requiring vaccination with the aim of reducing the risk of disease. An 1853 law required universal vaccination against smallpox in England and Wales, with fines levied against people who did not comply. These policies stirred resistance from a variety of groups, collectively called anti-vaccinationists, who objected on ethical, political, medical safety, religious, and other grounds. In the United States, the Supreme Court ruled in Jacobson v. Massachusetts that states have the authority to require vaccination against smallpox during a smallpox epidemic. All fifty U.S. states require that children be vaccinated to attend public school, although 47 states provide exemptions based on religious or philosophical beliefs. In the European Union, the 2021 case of Vavřička and Others v. the Czech Republic, decided by the European Court of Human Rights, held that the nation of the Czech Republic did not violate the European Convention on Human Rights by imposing a vaccination mandate on children in that country.Forced vaccination is uncommon, and typically happens only as an emergency measure during an outbreak. This has been reported in parts of China. Compulsory vaccinations greatly reduce infection rates for the diseases they protect against.
Common objections included the argument that governments should not infringe on individuals' freedom to make medical decisions for themselves or their children, or claims that proposed vaccinations were dangerous. Many modern vaccination policies allow exemptions for people with compromised immune systems, allergies to vaccination components, or strongly held objections.
In 1904, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, following an urban renewal program that displaced many poor, a government program of mandatory smallpox vaccination triggered the Vaccine Revolt, several days of rioting with considerable property damage and a number of deaths.
Compulsory vaccination is a difficult policy issue, requiring authorities to balance public health with individual liberty:
An ethical dilemma may emerge when health care providers attempt to persuade vaccine-hesitant families towards receiving vaccinations as this persuasion may lead to violating their autonomy. Investigation of different types of vaccination policy finds strong evidence that standing orders and allowing healthcare workers without prescription authority to administer vaccines in defined circumstances increase vaccination rates, and sufficient evidence that requiring vaccinations before attending child care and schools also does so. There is also evidence that mandatory vaccination policies for healthcare workers, for instance for influenza shots, increase uptake. One argument among public health professionals is that compulsory vaccination is necessary in severe circumstances, but that it should be approached carefully in order to avoid polarizing the population and decreasing trust in the long term.
Many countries have specific requirements for reporting vaccine-related adverse effects; others include vaccines under their general requirements for reporting injuries associated with medical treatments. A number of countries have both compulsory vaccination and national programs for the compensation of injuries alleged to have been caused by a vaccination.
In November 2021, during a COVID-19 outbreak, Austria banned unvaccinated individuals from leaving their home apart from going to work, buying essential supplies, or exercise, in an effort to reduce the spread of disease. During the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a low vaccination rate compared to the rest of Western Europe, the Austrian government made vaccination mandatory.
Parents' versus children's rights
Medical ethicist Arthur Caplan argues that children have a right to the best available medical care, including vaccines, regardless of parental opinions toward vaccines, saying, "Arguments about medical freedom and choice are at odds with the human and constitutional rights of children. When parents won't protect them, governments must." However, government entities, such as Child Protective Services, can intervene only when the parents directly harm their child via abuse or neglect, considering a child does not have the ability to give or take away consent. Although withholding medical care meets the criteria of abuse or neglect, refusing vaccinations does not, as the child is not being harmed directly.To prevent the spread of disease by unvaccinated individuals, some schools and doctors' surgeries have prohibited unvaccinated children from being enrolled, even where not required by law. Doctors who refuse to treat unvaccinated children harm both the child and public health, and may be considered unethical when parents are unable to find another provider. Opinion on this is divided, with the largest professional association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, saying that exclusion of unvaccinated children may be an option under narrowly defined circumstances.
One historical example is the 1990–91 Philadelphia measles outbreak, which led to the deaths of nine children in an anti-vaccination faith healing community. Court orders were obtained to have infected children given life-saving medical treatment, against the wishes of their parents, and also for healthy children to be vaccinated without parental consent.