[Should France continue to use BCG?].

In the context of the decrease of tuberculosis incidence, a re-assessment of the French BCG vaccination policy has been undertaken. The synthesis of the data available, done by the National Institute for Public Health Surveillance (InVS) has led to the conclusion of the absence of justification of the current policy of re-vaccinating children with a negative tuberculin skin test. Data from studies and from the results of the experiences from several countries having discontinued primovaccination confirm the effectiveness of BCG vaccination on childhood tuberculosis, mainly on extra-pulmonary cases. Base on these data and on the estimation carried out by InVS of the impact of the discontinuation in France of BCG re-vaccination and primovaccination, it was decided to discontinue the policy of re-vaccination and of routine tuberculin testing. A multidisciplinary expertise aimed at studying the relevancy, the feasibility and the acceptability of various options of reducing the target-population of primovaccination is on-going.