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Monitoring vaccine safety
Vaccines administered on a large scale to healthy persons require a very high degree of safety.
Nowadays the effects of diseases controlled by vaccination are less visible in many countries than they used to be. And as the impact of disease becomes less obvious, there is growing interest in adverse events following immunization (AEFI).
When serious AEFI are detected, their possible causal relationship to the vaccine needs to be investigated. In many cases the vaccine has no bearing on the events reported, but in some cases there may be a link. However, that possible link will never be known unless there is monitoring and detection.
That is why monitoring vaccine safety is an essential part of every immunization programme. For more information, see: