Please note: There was an error in Table 12a of the Immunisation Statistics 2008-09 Bulletin. It was stated that the figures were in thousands, but actual numbers were given. This occurred in both the Excel and PDF versions of the document. This error was corrected on 27 October 2010 and new versions of the Excel and PDF documents have been placed on the website.

Summary

The information in this bulletin, about immunisation statistics in England, comes from:

1. The Health Protection Agency (HPA) Centre for Infections (CfI) for information on childhood immunisation uptake at ages 1, 2 and 5 collected through the Cover of Vaccination Evaluated Rapidly (COVER) data collection for PCTs
2. The NHS Information Centre (The NHS IC) for information about the BCG programme and reinforcing doses on the KC50 return from known providers of immunisation services.
3. The Department of Health for:

• the new HPV vaccination programme for teenage girls
• persons aged 65 and over immunised against influenza for all PCTs (in conjunction with Health Protection Agency)

Key Facts

• immunisation of 12-13 year old girls (school year 8) against HPV, and thus protecting them against most cervical cancers, has started well with just over 87 per cent of eligible girls receiving the first dose and 70 per cent of eligible girls completing the programme of all 3 doses. Figures are published at England, Strategic Health Authority (SHA) and Primary Care Trust (PCT) level
• 78 per cent of children received first and second doses of MMR vaccine between the ages of 2 and 5, a full 4 percentage point increase on the previous year's figure; this coincides with the launch of an MMR catch-up campaign which began in August 2008. Although London remains below the national average coverage for this age band has increased significantly from 49 per cent for both doses in 2007-08 to 63 per cent this year*
• after falling to 80 per cent in 2003-04 uptake of the MMR vaccine for children reaching their second birthday increased steadily to 85 per cent in 2006-07 where it has remained through to 2008-09*
• for children reaching their second birthday in 2008-09, uptake of vaccines against diphtheria, tetanus, polio, pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae type b and meningitis C was between 92 per cent and 94 per cent and has been stable for the last five years*
• in the second year of reporting, uptake of the Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) has increased from 84 per cent for children immunised by their first birthday to 91 per cent.

* Data on childhood immunisation should be treated with some caution as small movements could be partly due to data issues in London where uptake rates are lower than elsewhere in the country. See section on Data Quality