Immunization
Stream.

Vaccine-preventable illness falls heavily on people already living with a noncommunicable disease. Influenza, pneumococcal disease and shingles carry a greater risk of severe illness, hospitalisation and lasting loss of function for people with diabetes, cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, kidney disease or cancer. An episode of infection can also set back the underlying condition for months afterwards.

Vaccination also prevents some cancers outright. HPV vaccination prevents cervical cancer, and hepatitis B vaccination prevents a large share of liver cancer. These are among the few places in medicine where a cancer can be stopped before it starts.

Adult immunization has less infrastructure behind it than childhood immunization. There are fewer delivery routes, fewer registries, less consistent funding and lower public awareness, and adult programmes are often built case by case rather than as a system.

People living with NCDs are also among the most frequently seen patients in any health service. They attend reviews, collect prescriptions and see specialists. Those contacts are an opportunity to protect them, and in many systems immunization and chronic disease care are organised and funded separately, so the opportunity passes unused.