IAC recently revised the handout "Vaccines work! CDC statistics demonstrate dramatic declines in vaccine-preventable diseases when compared with the pre-vaccine era" to incorporate the most recent disease statistics. This handout can be a useful resource when talking with patients or parents who question the efficacy or importance of vaccination.

To access the revised ready-to-print (PDF) handout "Vaccines work!" go to: http://www.immunize.org/catg.d/p4037.pdf

IAC's Handouts for Patients and Staff web section offers healthcare professionals and the public approximately 250 FREE English-language handouts (many also available in translation), which we encourage website users to print out, copy, and distribute widely. To access all of IAC's free handouts, go to: http://www.immunize.org/handouts

IAC encourages IAC Express readers to watch a 4-minute news clip about a 38-day-old Indiana infant who died of pertussis. CDC recommends that parents and all other close contacts of infants younger than age 12 months receive a single dose of tetanus-diphtheria toxoids and acellular pertussis (Tdap) vaccine to protect infants from pertussis.

The video will be available on the home page of IAC's website through June 13. To access it, go to: http://www.immunize.org and click on the image under the words Video of the Week.

Remember to bookmark IAC's home page to view a new video every Monday. To view an IAC Video of the Week from the past, go to the video archive at http://www.immunize.org/votw

Led by CDC and the Safe Injection Practices Coalition (SIPC), the One & Only Campaign is intended to raise awareness among patients and healthcare providers about safe injection practices and to eradicate outbreaks resulting from unsafe practices. The campaign title comes from the slogan "One Needle, One Syringe, Only One Time."

Since 1999, more than 125,000 patients in the United States have been notified of potential exposure to hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), and HIV due to lapses in basic infection control practices. Many of these lapses involved healthcare providers reusing syringes, resulting in contamination of medication vials or containers that were then used on subsequent patients.

Readers may be especially interested in a 10-minute training video available at http://www.oneandonlycampaign.org/videos

The video opens with a personal story from Evelyn McKnight who contracted HCV when her healthcare providers failed to adhere to safe injection practices. The viewer is then presented with three scenarios in three settings where medications are prepared and administered: an operating room, an oncology clinic, and a pain management clinic. The viewer is taken through potential errors that could occur in medication handling or injection preparation or administration. Each scenario ends with a summary of steps that can and should be taken to assure safe care. A fourth segment concludes the video by outlining and correcting myths and misperceptions that healthcare providers may have about safe injection practices.

The One & Only Campaign's website offers many resources, including brochures for healthcare providers and patients, FAQs, links to related news articles, and more. To visit the campaign website's home page, go to: http://www.oneandonlycampaign.org

On May 21, the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution to tackle the world's biggest killer of children younger than age five--pneumonia. The resolution calls on governments to combat pneumonia by implementing three groups of effective interventions outlined in the WHO/UNICEF Global Action Plan for the prevention and control of Pneumonia (GAPP).

GAPP aims to

• Protect children by providing a healthy environment where they are at low risk of developing pneumonia. Steps include encouraging exclusive breastfeeding for six months, reducing indoor air pollution, and promoting hand washing.
   
• Prevent children from becoming ill with pneumonia by vaccinating against its causes. Pneumococcus bacteria and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) are the leading causes of the most severe cases of pneumonia, and both are vaccine-preventable.
   
• Treat children who become ill with pneumonia through effective case management in communities, health centers, and hospitals.

For more information, read the related press release from the GAVI Alliance, found at
http://www.gavialliance.org/media_centre/press_releases/
2010_05_21_wha_pneumonia_resolution.php

CDC published "Preliminary Results: Surveillance for Guillain-Barre Syndrome After Receipt of Influenza A (H1N1) 2009 Monovalent Vaccine--United States, 2009-2010" in the June 4 issue of MMWR. This report was previously published as an MMWR Early Release on June 2. The first paragraph is reprinted below.

To access the full article in web-text (HTML) format, go to:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5921a3.htm

The June 4 issue of the WHO periodical "Weekly Epidemiological Record" includes the latest WHO position paper on polio vaccines and polio immunization in the pre-eradication era. To access it, go to: http://www.who.int/wer/2010/wer8523.pdf

A collection of WHO position papers on vaccines is available in alphabetical order at http://www.who.int/immunization/documents/positionpapers

They are available in chronological order on the IAC website at http://www.immunize.org/who

The Vaccine Education Center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia will hold a Vaccine Education Symposium on September 25 in Philadelphia. The symposium is intended for physicians, allied health and public health professionals, nurses, and other healthcare professionals who work in the field of immunizations.

The symposium will examine vaccines in light of these and other topics:

• Vaccine safety concerns
• Current challenges in vaccine financing
• Parents refusal to vaccinate

For more information, download the symposium brochure at
http://www.chop.edu/system/galleries/download/pdfs/articles/cme/vaccine-2010.pdf

To register online, go to:
https://www.chop.edu/professionals/educational-resources/continuing-medical-education/registration.cfm/vaccine-2010

Dated 5/14/10, the interim VIS for rotavirus vaccine is now available in Thai. IAC gratefully acknowledges Asian Pacific Health Care Venture, Inc., for the translation.

To access the Thai translation of the interim VIS for rotavirus, as well as this VIS in English, go to: http://www.immunize.org/vis/vis_rotavirus.asp

For information about the use of VISs, and for VISs in more than 35 languages, visit IAC's VIS web section at http://www.immunize.org/vis

PKIDs (Parents of Kids with Infectious Diseases) has scheduled a 1.5-hour webinar for July 15. The presenters--Chris Saylor and Sherri Michelstein from Alembic Health Communications--will discuss the social marketing programs that have helped the National Meningitis Association advance its mission of raising public awareness about meningococcal disease and encouraging vaccination.

The "National Meningitis Association Shares Secrets of Social Marketing Success" webinar is scheduled for July 15 at 9AM Pacific Time (noon Eastern Time). Space is limited and pre-registration is recommended. To register, go to: https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/schedule/display.do?udc=p1k2n46d7jtv

The webinar is part of Communications Made Easy, a PKIDS' program intended to help immunization educators learn the ropes of social marketing and traditional and social media. For more information on the Communications Made Easy program, go to: http://www.pkids.org/cme