Past and Present Vaccinations in Sweden

IntroductionSweden's population grew rapidly during the 19th century.Esaias Tegnér (1782-1846), who was a bishop, parliamentarian and member of the Swedish Academy, had a theory about why this was happening.In 1833 he stated that this was due to 'the peace, the vaccine and the potatoes'.That statement is still valid today.It is important that populations have good health and this requires peace, a functioning society with high compliance with vaccination programmes and good access to nutritious food.Vaccines serve little purpose if they are only available to those who can afford to pay for them or if they are received sporadically outside vaccination programmes.Therefore, well-implemented vaccination programmes are one of the most cost-effective ways of improving health and preventing global diseases and death.The current national vaccination programmes have been well researched, tested and effective.Diseases have largely decreased and in some cases they have completely disappeared (Figure 1).During the 18th and 19th centuries, there seemed to be a greater focus on practical measures to contain the spread of diseases and epidemics, rather than ongoing research into what actually caused them in the first place.Some of the doctors, politicians and philosophers who promoted early public health approaches tried to stop epidemics by putting infected individuals into quarantine and these restrictions often lasted for at least 40 days.They maintained that crowding, poverty and undernutrition were associated with severe outcomes.The centuries-old miasma theory was also repeated, which maintained that epidemics were caused by bad smells and bad air, due to rotten organic material.That is why they focused on interventions to improve hygiene, such as garbage disposal, sewage systems and clean water, during these periods.Both of these approaches co-existed in some communities [1].However, the germ theory was presented during the second half of the 19th century, which stated that specific pathogens, such as bacteria, viruses, fungi and protozoa, caused many infectious diseases.This move away from the historical miasma theory paved the way for numerous groundbreaking medical advances, including life-saving vaccines.