LIFELONG VACCINATION FOR A HEALTHIER POPULATION AND A HEALTHIER HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

Sa？etak Introduction: Vaccination is the most effective preventative measure that, in addition to preventing and / or reducing infectious diseases, adds value to the health care system by reducing the costs of treatment and hospitalization. Lifelong vaccination is a vaccination at different ages through life and includes vaccination and revaccination against diseases that we may be exposed in the environment in which we live and work or when traveling abroad. When it comes to vaccination, the usual focus is on vaccination of children, while the importance of vaccination during adulthood and in older age, or es-pecially with pre-existing chronic conditions, is still insufficient. The aim of the paper is to present the added value of lifelong vaccination in the form of cost reduc-tions in healthcare resulting from treatment, hospitalizations and reduction of prescribing of antibiotics. Materials and methods: Review and analysis of publications and vaccination reports of the Croatian Institute of Public Health and available literature in the bibliographic database PubMed. The literature review was conducted according to the keywords ？vaccination“ and ？costs“. We have included in the analysis English-language papers published between 2010 and 2019. A total of 10 publications were analysed for the purposes of this paper. Results and discussion: Literature data showed that lifelong vaccination is most often considered in the context of vaccination of young people and adults against human papillomavirus (HPV), chronic patients (such as cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes) against influ-enza, and vaccination of adults and the elderly person against pneumococcal disease. Vaccinations of preschool and school children are most commonly associated with vaccinations from the national vac-cination programs and with existing experts recommendations. In Croatia we are achieving satisfactory vaccination coverage for preschool and school children vaccinations from compulsory vaccination schedule. Tetanus vaccination is part of a compulsory vaccination program and the vaccination report for 2017 showed a vaccine coverage of less than 50%. Last year, less than 10% of the population was vaccinated against flu, including about 30% of the elderly, significantly less than the World Health Organization's recommendations. According to the available published data on the vaccination of chronic flu patients, it is not possible to determine what chronic conditions were involved. Data for countries with an influenza vaccination coverage of more