Chapter 5 Rubella Epidemiology: Surveillance to Monitor and Evaluate Congenital Rubella Prevention Strategies

Publisher Summary Rubella Epidemiology: Surveillance to Monitor and Evaluate Congenital Rubella Prevention StrategiesTo prevent cases of congenital rubella, there is a need of a comprehensive surveillance program to monitor immunity in the population and detect cases of both rubella and congenital rubella along with an understanding of the likely outcomes of different vaccination strategies. WHO developed guidelines for the surveillance of rubella and congenital. These recommend clinical surveillance of rubella and congenital rubella infection; serological surveillance to detect changes in the prevalence of rubella immunity in the population; and the recording of vaccine coverage. The age- and sex-specific incidence of rubella infection and the incidence of congenital rubella infection should be made available at the country level. Several research groups have modeled the transmission dynamics of rubella virus to assess the impact of different vaccine strategies and levels of vaccination uptake on age at infection, population seroprevalence and the number of pregnancies affected by rubella. Many studies focus on the dichotomy between schoolgirl vaccination programs, sometimes referred to as a selective vaccination strategy, and the vaccination of boys and girls in early life, i.e. a universal strategy.