ASID affirms its strong support for the use of safe and effective vaccines across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand
Vaccines are one of the most powerful public health tools, preventing millions of deaths and long-term health consequences from devastating diseases each year. As they are given to healthy persons to prevent disease, large clinical trials to assess safety and efficacy are undertaken pre-registration and robust surveillance systems have been established to monitor their ongoing effectiveness and safety and can promptly flag any potential issues to regulatory bodies. An adverse event following immunisation (AEFI) includes any untoward occurrence that follows a vaccine. Importantly, these events are not always caused by the vaccine itself; many occur coincidentally. For example, when large populations are vaccinated, some unrelated conditions will naturally occur around the same time as vaccination.
In Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (AoNZ), vaccine safety monitoring is robust and informed by multiple sources, including information from peer-reviewed scientific publications and surveillance systems both locally and overseas. In Australia, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) operates a system comparable to the US Vaccine Events Reporting System (VAERS) and reviews any events identified via voluntary reporting by vaccine service providers, public health units, vaccine recipients or others. This information is publicly available and searchable. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Medsafe and the Centre for Adverse Events monitoring (CARM) receive reports of events after vaccinations and assess safety. These systems also review whether an event is more likely to occur after a vaccine, compared to general background rate. Active surveillance is also undertaken in Australia with systems proactively gathering targeted information from vaccine recipients and reviewing medical records to provide a more complete picture of vaccine safety. Both Australia and AoNZ are also key contributors to the Global Vaccine Data Network , providing leadership and using health data from many countries around the work to examine and monitor vaccine safety.