Mary Ramsay is a Consultant Epidemiologist and Head of the Immunisation, Hepatitis and Blood Safety department at UKHSA. She joined the then Centre for Disease Surveillance and Control (CDSC), Colindale as a Consultant in 1994 after training in Public Health Medicine and held an academic post at St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School. She has been responsible for the national surveillance of vaccine preventable diseases since 1994 and since the move into PHE in 2013, has taken on additional responsibilities for the implementation of all vaccine programmes and the secretariat to the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. She is joint chief editor for the UK’s Immunisation against Infectious Disease (Green Book) and has been a temporary advisor to the WHO on immunisation policy.
Vaccines work. They have played a critical role in breaking the link between infection and severe outcomes, and we should express our gratitude to the scientists who developed life-saving vaccines against COVID-19 and to those who work tirelessly every day to roll out the programme at pace across the country.
The COVID-19 vaccination programme for children aged 12-15 years has now started. Thousands of young people across the country have already taken the opportunity to receive their vaccine. This blog answers key questions on the programme.
Since the beginning of the vaccination programme, Public Health England (PHE) has been monitoring the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in the real world and has now published its first analysis of the impact of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
PHE’s Head of immunisation Dr Mary Ramsay describes how testing blood samples is helping us gather crucial data on the spread of COVID-19.
England is a world leader in childhood vaccinations but PHE data show that while coverage remains high, children’s vaccine uptake has been slowly decreasing since 2012-13. This blog looks at 10 ways to address barriers to vaccination in primary care.
There’s a simple reason vaccination is so important - it prevents disease and saves lives. And in terms of disease prevention, only clean water (also considered to be a basic human right) performs better. This week is European Immunisation Week, …
