Key messages

- Reminder and recall interventions are an effective way of increasing the rates of routine childhood immunisations in high-income countries.
- This review found no direct evidence of how effective reminder and recall interventions are in low and middle-income countries.
- Reminder and recall
interventions rely crucially on a stable health system with ongoing immunisation programmes that can identify and follow potential recipients of vaccination. Health systems in low and middle-income countries are not always able to support this.
- Other factors that need to be considered to assess whether the intervention effects are likely to be transferable to other settings include the availability of the:

− Technology or physical infrastructure to provide reminders (e.g. telephones, computers, a functioning postal system) and literacy of parents (e.g. for post cards);
− Resources to provide the additional clinical and administrative infrastructure to implement reminder and recall programmes;
− Vaccines.