Vaccines against tick-borne encephalitis: WHO position paper

Overview

In accordance with its mandate to provide guidance to Member States on health policy matters, WHO issues a series of regularly updated position papers on vaccines and combinations of vaccines against diseases that have an international public health impact. These papers are concerned primarily with the use of vaccines in large-scale immunization programmes; they summarize essential background information on diseases and vaccines, and conclude with the current WHO position on their use worldwide. The papers have been reviewed by experts within and outside WHO, and since 2006 they have been reviewed and endorsed by the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE). Position papers are designed to be used mainly by national public health officials and managers of immunization programmes. They may also be of interest to international funding agencies, vaccine manufacturers, the medical community, the scientific media and the public.

This is the first WHO position paper on vaccines against tick-borne encephalitis. Recommendations on the use of these vaccines were discussed by SAGE at its meeting in April 2011. Evidence presented at the meeting can be accessed at http://www. who.int/immunization/sage/previous/en/ index.html.

n this paper, footnotes provide a limited number of core references including references to grading tables that assess the quality of scientific evidence for a few key conclusions; a more comprehensive list of references is offered in the Background document on vaccines and vaccination against tick-borne encephalitis.