The Bandim Health Project is a health and demographic surveillance site in Guinea-Bissau.
Surprisingly, our research has shown that vaccines not only protect against the target disease, but also modifies susceptibility to unrelated infections.
These so-called “non-specific effects” have major consequences for child survival. The results indicate that the international community can save millions of children in the world’s poorest countries, if the vaccination programs are optimized to take into account both specific and non-specific effects of vaccines.