Serovigilancia de enfermedades prevenibles por vacunación: una mirada desde la experiencia de la tosferina

Introduction: Serological surveillance (serosurveillance) provides the most direct measure of herd immunity of vaccine preventable diseases. Little is known about the opportunities and challenges of serosurveillance experiences, particularly pertussis. Objective: To describe the process of serosurveillance for vaccine preventable diseases with an emphasis on the experience of pertussis in the metropolitan area of Antioquia (Valle de Aburra) in 2015-2016 and analyze the contributions and challenges for its sustainability. Materials and methods: This study described the planning and conduction of serosurveillance of pertussis antibodies of mothers and umbilical cord at the time of delivery in eight hospitals – based random sampling and the capacity to advance the serosurveillance periodically. The contributions and challenges of this experience were compared with other probabilistic and non-probabilistic programs. Results: The participation of hospitals and mothers was achieved by respecting the delivery care process. A serum bank was established following ethical and technical guidelines. This program with random selection of hospitals and mothers allows for estimation of the prevalence of antibodies from the mother and the umbilical cord facilitated by the high coverage of hospital care during childbirth, with lower cost and risks than a population - based surveys in conflictive areas.  Create stable jobs and have funding and legal and methodological longer-term frameworks are the main challenges to ensure the sustainability of the program. Conclusions: hospital serosurveillance as described is an option to monitor the population impact of vaccination. Our experience could be extended to other regions under similar conditions, if the challenges are faced.