Prof McIntyre, of the University of Otago, and fellow Otago academic paediatrician Associate Prof Tony Walls have just had a vaccine-related chapter published in the online Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Public Health.
The encyclopedia is a digital document continuously updated by scholars and researchers.
Prof McIntyre, of the department of women’s and children’s health, and Prof Walls, of the department of paediatrics at Otago’s Christchurch campus, specialise in infectious diseases that affect children.
They have worked together on the chapter project since 2018.
Prof McIntyre hoped the chapter, titled "Global Public Health Impact of Vaccines in Children", would raise awareness of the importance of vaccines in protecting children.
The hugely damaging Covid-19 pandemic was a strong reminder of the importance of vaccines, and he hoped the chapter would raise awareness of the need to increase vaccination rates.
The health benefits of child vaccination were "enormous" and the chapter aimed to summarise the outcomes, for non-vaccine specialists, Prof McIntyre said.
Vaccines rated alongside a clean water supply, improved nutrition and antibiotics as the "top contributors to global child health, and the health of children in New Zealand, of the past 100 years", he said.
The two researchers had aimed to provide "up-to-date, high-quality and free-to-access" information for students of public health from lower-income countries.
The chapter traced progress made since the launch of the expanded programme of immunisation of the World Health Organisation in the 1970s — after the great global success in eradicating smallpox — by initially targeting six key diseases: polio, diphtheria, tetanus, measles, tuberculosis and whooping cough.
Major vaccination progress had taken place internationally since 1980 and the last deaths from measles in New Zealand had occurred in the 1991 epidemic, he said.
Comments
Vaccines are absolutely life-saving.
However, the right to choose whether or not to undergo a procedure - even one as routine as vaccination - must always be upheld.
I am pro-vaccination, but I will always strongly support the right of my fellow kiwis to refuse vaccination if they choose.