The Childhood Immunization Programme 2023
Report
|Published
Denne rapporten beskriver hvordan Folkehelseinstituttet (FHI) arbeidet med det nasjonale barnevaksinasjonsprogrammet i 2023, vaksinasjonsdekning, meldte tilfeller av sykdommene det vaksineres mot, hvilke vaksiner som ble benyttet og meldte bivirkninger. Rapporten gir også informasjon om de ulike overvåkingssystemene vi har for å følge med på effekt og sikkerhet av vaksinene i barnevaksinasjonsprogrammet.
Summary
The Childhood Immunization Programme 2023
This report informs the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH)s activity on the Childhood Immunization Programme (CIP) in 2023, reporting the vaccination coverage, notified cases of vaccine preventable diseases covered in the programme, the vaccines used and reported adverse events following immunization. The report also provides information about the surveillance systems in place to monitor the effectiveness and safety of the vaccines in the CIP.
The Norwegian child vaccination program is offered to all children and adolescents and includes vaccines against 12 diseases: Rotavirus disease, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, poliomyelitis, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) infection, hepatitis B, pneumococcal disease, measles, mumps, rubella and human papillomavirus (HPV). Children in defined risk groups are also offered the vaccine against tuberculosis (BCG), and premature infants born before gestational week 32 are offered an extra dose of hexavalent vaccine[1] at 6-8 weeks of age to reduce the risk of whooping cough.
The vaccination coverage is high and thus provides high protection against the diseases in the Norwegian population. Low incidence of the diseases demonstrates the effectiveness of a highly endorsed vaccine programme. The HPV vaccine coverage for girls was ranked the highest in the world in a 2021 publication and has continued to rise since (1). The corresponding HPV vaccination coverage for boys is now nearly as high.
Although the coverage is high for all vaccines on a national level, there is a minor decrease in coverage for some vaccines. In most cases the decrease is less than 1%. More detailed analyses have disclosed variations in the coverage among subgroups according to geography and children with foreign-born parents.
In addition, the NIPH reports vaccination coverage for two other subgroups in this report: the extra dose of hexavalent vaccine for premature infants and vaccination against hepatitis B in infants of mothers with hepatitis B. This was possible by linking data from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway (MFR), the Norwegian Surveillance System for Communicable Diseases (MSIS) and the Norwegian Immunisation Registry (SYSVAK). The vaccination coverage for these vaccines is lower than the other vaccines in the CIP, especially for the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine in infants of mothers with hepatitis B.
There is a small increase of reported severe adverse events following immunization, from 31 reports in 2022 to 45 reports in 2023. The number of events is very low in view of the total number of vaccine doses given to children, which in 2023 was 776 850 vaccine doses, and when compared to reported severe adverse events over the last 10 years. The reported adverse events give no reason to change the current recommendations for vaccines used in the programme.
The NIPH monitors vaccine coverage and disease to fulfill Norway's goal of eliminating certain vaccine preventable diseases in the CIP. Norway has achieved the elimination targets for measles, rubella and eradication for poliomyelitis, and has estimated that cervical cancer can be eliminated by 2039 with current measures. Norway aims to eliminate hepatitis B as a public health problem, where the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine for risk groups is crucial to eliminate perinatal transmission.
[1] Hexavalent vaccine = six-component vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, poliomyelitis, Hib infection and hepatitis B
