Immunisations: policy context

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation(JCVI) provides advice on vaccines and immunisation strategies in the UK. The JCVI is an independent expert advisory committee that advises UK Secretaries of State for Health on communicable diseases that are preventable or potentially preventable through immunisation. It was established in England and Wales under the National Health Service Act and although the committee has no statutory basis in Scotland or Northern Ireland, it fulfils the same role and has the same responsibilities.

The Chief Medical Officer, routinely issues advice and guidance to health professionals, following JCVI recommendations, on changes to the immunisation programme. Recent updates have included:

Report of the MMR expert group (718kb) - this expert group was established by the Scottish Executive in response to recommendations set out in the Health and Community Care committee's report of the inquiry into issues surrounding the alleged relationship between the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and autism.

Scottish Framework for Nursing in Schools - covers routine and mass immunisation programmes for school-aged children.

Health for All Children 4 : Guidance On Implementation In Scotland 2005-Getting It Right For Scotland's Children - guidance to support implementation in Scotland, of the Royal College of Paediatrics & Child Health recommendations on child health screening and surveillance activity.

UK Health Departments' UK Influenza Pandemic Contingency Plan(569kb).

National Targets

The Scottish Government has set a national target rate of 95% uptake among children aged 24 months for completed courses of the pre-school immunisations: diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, Hib, MenC and PCV. An additional target of 95% uptake of one dose of MMR (MMR1) by 5 years old (with a supplementary measure at 24 months) was introduced in 2006 to focus efforts to reduce the number of susceptible children entering primary school. For most of these diseases, current uptake rates are in excess of the target and the latest information is available on the ISD website.

The government target is to achieve a 70% influenza vaccine uptake in the population aged 65 years and over and a 60% vaccine uptake for those aged under 65 in the following clinical risk groups ; adults with serious heart, chest, kidney and other long-term health problems. Information on progress towards these targets is available from the vaccination monitoring pages on the ISD website.