Acknowledgements

We thank the Scientific Advisory Committee of the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance of Vaccine Preventable Diseases, especially Dr Cathy Mead and Professor John Kaldor, who generated the initial ideas for these reports. Special thanks to Dr Rod Givney, Communicable Diseases Control Branch, Department of Human Services, South Australia, and Mr James Fielding, Master of Applied Epidemiology Program, Australian National University, for the provision of South Australian varicella-zoster notifications data. We wish to acknowledge the following people who provided expert feedback for individual chapters: Mr Ross Andrews for pneumococcal disease, Dr Paul Armstrong for hepatitis A, Professor Margaret Burgess for rubella, Dr Gregory Dore for hepatitis B, Professor Lyn Gilbert for diphtheria and tetanus, Dr Rod Givney for Hib disease, Dr Heath Kelly for influenza and polio, Dr Steve Lambert for mumps and measles, Dr Rosemary Lester for vaccination coverage, Dr Jeremy McAnulty for pertussis, Dr Mark Veitch for varicella-zoster, Dr Margaret Young for meningococcal disease. We also thank Dr Jill Forrest and Catherine King, who provided invaluable advice and edited the manuscript, and Jan Michniewicz who helped prepare the manuscript.

We wish to acknowledge the following organisations for provision of data for this report: The Surveillance Section of the Population Health Division of the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing, for data from the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System; and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Hospitals and Mental Health Services Unit and Population Health Unit, for data from the National Hospital Morbidity and Mortality Databases.

The report was reviewed by a representative of the Commonwealth, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and each Australian jurisdiction from the Communicable Diseases Network Australia before publication.