The international journal Vaccine has released a special issue dedicated in full to the Decade of Vaccines that highlights the extensive body of knowledge collected in developing the Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP). This supplement includes the complete GVAP, a foreword by the Decade of Vaccines Collaboration (DoVC) Leadership Council, an editorial by the Steering Committee Co-Chairs and members of the DoVC Secretariat and 27 companion documents that link with the GVAP six strategic objectives.

Articles in the special supplement underline the need to improve understanding about the health benefits of immunization and emphasise the necessity of better supply and logistics systems to reach the estimated 22 million children in developing countries who are still not protected from dangerous diseases with basic vaccines.

In 2012 the World Health Assembly endorsed the Global Vaccine Action Plan that aims to define a roadmap to deliver universal access to immunization by 2020. The series of papers published in this supplement were commissioned to further explore the themes found at the heart of the GVAP: equity, collaboration, innovation and country ownership, so that every individual can have access to life-saving vaccines. The report has been endorsed by the DoV Collaboration co-chairs Prof. Pedro Alonso and Dr. Ciro de Quadros and the DoV Collaboration Secretariat hosted by ISGlobal, PATH and the Sabin Vaccine Institute.

Vaccine special supplement is accessible at:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0264410X/31//supp/S2