Synopsis

Vaccine safety and disease surveillance are keys to maintaining confidence in our national immunisation program and maximising the benefits high vaccine coverage can bring to reducing the devastation of infectious diseases in our communities. In Victoria, this effort is led by ‘SAEFVIC’ https://www.saefvic.org.au/. Now 10 years old, SAEFVIC has supported new vaccine introductions (e.g. HPV, rotavirus and zoster vaccines) and investigated a number of safety signals. ‘SAEFVIC’ had been replicated in other states and is a leading site of the national AusVaxSafety network. The Paediatric Active Enhanced Disease Surveillance (PAEDS) program http://www.paeds.edu.au/ is also 10-years old.  PAEDS conducts surveillance for 8 conditions, including complex syndromic diagnoses (e.g. the Australian Childhood Encephalitis study) and lab based surveillance (e.g. pertussis, invasive meningococcal and most recently invasive group A streptococcal disease). This grand round is a chance to reflect on 10-years of clinical vaccine safety, paediatric surveillance and what lies ahead for immunisation, for both children and adults.

Speakers

Dr Nigel Crawford is a consultant general paediatrician and Head of Immunisation Services at RCH. His interests include vaccine education and he established the Melbourne Vaccine Education Centre in 2013. He is a member of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation. Nigel has 10 years of clinical vaccine safety experience and is Deputy Director of SAEFVIC, based at MCRI. He is also co-lead of the national Adverse Event Following Immunisation- Clinical Assessment Network.

Associate Professor Kristine Macartney is a paediatrician specialising in infectious diseases and vaccinology. She is the Deputy Director of the Australian National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS), based in Sydney. Kristine leads two national surveillance networks – the Paediatric Active Enhanced Disease Surveillance (PAEDS) network and the AusVaxSafety active vaccine safety surveillance network. She is the senior editor of the Australian Immunisation Handbook.  Kristine is interested in all aspects of vaccinology and vaccine preventable disease control, especially viral diseases, vaccine policy-making and vaccine safety. She also has had roles on numerous key peak advisory committees, including ATAGI, and the Advisory Committee on Vaccines (ACV) of the TGA.