Tetanus vaccines: WHO position paper – February 2017

Overview

In accordance with its mandate to provide guidance to Member States on health policy matters, WHO issues a series of regularly updated position papers on vaccines and combinations of vaccines against diseases that have an international public health impact. These papers are concerned primarily with the use of vaccines in large-scale immunization programmes. They summarize essential background information on diseases and vaccines and conclude with the current WHO position on the use of vaccines worldwide.

The papers are reviewed by external experts and WHO staff, and reviewed and endorsed by the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) (http://www.who.int/immunization/sage/en).

The GRADE methodology is used to systematically assess the quality of the available evidence. The SAGE decision-making process is reflected in the evidence-to-recommendation table.1 A description of the processes followed for the development of vaccine position papers is available at: http://www.who.int/immunization/position_papers/position_paper_process.pdf

The position papers are intended for use mainly by national public health officials and managers of immunization programmes. They may also be of interest to international funding agencies, vaccine advisory groups, vaccine manufacturers, the medical community, the scientific media, and the general public.