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Immunisation Handbook 2017

The Immunisation Handbook 2017 (the Handbook) provides clinical guidelines for health professionals on the safest and most effective use of vaccines in their practice. These guidelines are based on the best scientific evidence available at the time of publication, from published and unpublished literature.

Published online: 
29 May 2017
Immunisation Handbook 2017.

Read the handbook

To read the Immunisation Handbook you can:

Refer to the Pharmaceutical Schedule (on the Pharmac website) for the number of funded doses, eligibility criteria and any subsequent changes to the funding decisions

Changes to the 2017 edition

All chapters have been updated and revised since the 2014 edition. The following changes have been made.

  • There is a new section at the end of each disease chapter called ‘Variations from the vaccine data sheets’.
  • The content from chapter 2 ‘Processes for safe immunisation’ has been reformatted into pre-vaccination, vaccine administration and post-vaccination sections.
  • The ‘Passive immunisation’ section of chapter 1 has been moved to its own appendix (Appendix 6).
  • The ‘Cold chain: vaccine storage, transport and destruction’ appendix has been removed and its content is now included in the Ministry of Health document National Standards for Vaccine Storage and Transportation for Immunisation Providers 2017.
  • The ‘Notifiable disease case definitions and laboratory tests’ appendix (Appendix 8) has been removed. Health care providers should use the Ministry of Health’s Communicable Disease Control Manual 2012 for case definition and laboratory test information.
  • There is a new appendix, ‘High-incidence TB countries’ (Appendix 8), with a list of countries with tuberculosis (TB) rates of ≥40 per 100,000 population.

Individual chapters

Publishing information

  • Date of publication:
    29 May 2017
  • ISBN:
    978-1-98-850251-9 (print), 978-1-98-850252-6 (online), 978-1-8-850253-3 (ebook)
  • HP number:
    6600
  • Citation:
    Ministry of Health. 2017. Immunisation Handbook 2017. Wellington: Ministry of Health.
  • Ordering information:
    Hard copy available to be ordered, also soft copy available to download
  • Copyright status:
    Owned by the Ministry of Health and licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.

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Immunisation Handbook

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Page last updated: 10 July 2017

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