Vaccination of children – a systematic review.

Various cultures have practised immunization against a range of infectious diseases for many centuries, but the principles began to gain general acceptance in 1796 when Edward Jenner showed that vaccination against cowpox provided protection against smallpox, which was the most common cause of death among young children at the time. Sweden adopted compulsory vaccination against smallpox in 1816. While vaccination eradicated smallpox in many countries, the need to vaccinate entire populations remained as long as the infection could still be found anywhere in the world. As recently as the early 1960s, a Swedish sailor brought the disease back to the country and gave rise to a national smallpox epidemic. A global vaccination campaign launched against smallpox by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1967 eradicated the disease within 10 years. Thus, Sweden stopped administering the vaccine in 1976. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]