The question of whether the parents of a child who suffered serious health problems after being vaccinated can sue a pharmaceutical company for compensation will be considered in the US Supreme Court.

The case, which the highest US court will hear in autumn, will serve as a focal point in a years-long debate in the United States over the effectiveness of preventive vaccines and whether they have caused health problems.

It involves Hannah Bruesewitz, who was left developmentally impaired after receiving a diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccination.

Her parents are challenging decisions by two Pennsylvania courts that rejected their attempts to seek compensation from US pharmaceutical laboratory Wyeth, which made the vaccine.

The courts cited a 1988 law that prevents plaintiffs from seeking any "damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine."

But Bruesewitz's parents and the US Supreme Court noted a Georgia court ruling allowed parents to bring claims against vaccine manufacturers.

"After exhausting administrative remedies in the vaccine program, children in Georgia who are injured by vaccines may bring design defect claims against vaccine manufacturers when the use of safer alternative vaccines could have avoided their injuries," the Supreme Court wrote in agreeing to consider the case.

"By contrast, Hannah Bruesewitz and children like her... may be precluded from pursuing identical design defect claims even when the same safer alternative vaccines could have avoided their suffering too," it added.