Governments welcome new WHO/UNICEF global immunisation strategy

EPP News Bureau - Mumbai

Governments from across the world, during a meeting at the World Health Assembly, have officially committed to adopting an ambitious new global strategy to fight vaccine-preventable diseases, which kill more than two million people every year. Two-thirds of the victims are young children, according to a release issued by the World Health Organization (WHO). The Global Immunization Vision and Strategy (GIVS) was designed by the WHO and the United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

‘‘The new vision and strategy will enable us to rise to the serious challenges we foresee in the immunisation field in the next decade. More people, from infants to seniors, must be protected from more diseases. We will take immunisation to new heights, building on solid achievements of the past and will bring good health to many more,’’ said Dr LEE Jong-wook, director-general, WHO.

GIVS has three main aims: to immunise more people against more diseases; to introduce a range of newly available vaccines and technologies and to provide a number of critical health interventions with immunisation. GIVS covers the period 2006-2015 and offers a set of strategies from which countries can select and implement those most suited to their needs.

Vaccination has been one of the most successful and cost-effective public health interventions in history. It has eradicated smallpox, lowered the global incidence of polio by 99 per cent since 1988 and achieved dramatic reductions in illness and death from diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and measles. In 2003 alone, immunisation averted more than two million deaths.

However, immunisation is far from universal. Some countries are slipping back from previously established vaccination coverage levels. In 2003, an estimated 27 million infants and 40 million pregnant women worldwide remained unprotected from vaccine-preventable diseases.

‘‘One in four children is still deprived of lifesaving vaccines that should be within reach,’’ said UNICEF executive director Ann M Veneman. ‘‘This new strategy recognises that, if we are to improve child survival, immunisation must be sustained year in and year out.’’

Child health and survival will be improved through the delivery of a package of key health interventions, such as nutrition and insecticide-treated nets against malaria—at the point of immunisation—especially for populations who are hard to reach. The strategy gives unprecedented attention economically deprived and socially marginalised people living in remote or underserved geographical areas such as urban slums and remote rural areas. The goal is for each country to reach 80 per cent immunisation coverage in each district by 2010.

Another pillar of GIVS is to ensure access of those at risk in all countries to an unprecedented array of new vaccines and technologies that are already licensed or are at an advanced stage of development. These include vaccines against major killers such as rotavirus, which is responsible for as much as one-fourth of the 1.9 million annual child deaths due to acute diarrhoea and pneumococcal disease which makes up a large proportion of the two million annual deaths from acute respiratory infections.

Over the next ten years, the cost of immunisation is expected to rise substantially as countries include newer and more expensive vaccines in their immunisation programmes. Although these vaccines are still cost-effective, affordability will present a barrier to their use, particularly in low-income countries. Strategic partnerships with industry and new approaches to health financing to ensure equitable access to these vaccines are critical. GIVS urges all stakeholders to increase resources for immunisation, ensuring that affordable vaccines and the necessary funds for immunisation are available to all countries. On course it also builds a back-up for use in case of health emergencies and global epidemics. GIVS also calls for every child, adolescent and adult to have equal access to immunisation.

With adequate efforts and financal support, by 2015, immunisation could be preventing four to five million child deaths per year and would contribute significantly to the Millennium Development Goals, especially the reduction by two-thirds of the under-five child mortality rate. GIVS sets a number of specific immunisation goals, such as reducing measles mortality by 90 per cent within the next five years from the 2000 level.

WHO and UNICEF will assist governments in designing, financing and implementing strengthened sustainable national immunisation programmes that meet their specific, evidence-based needs. Above all, governments are strongly encouraged to put immunisation high on all health agendas.

According to WHO estimates, in 2002, around 2.1 million people died of diseases preventable by vaccines currently recommended by WHO; measles (610,000 deaths), hepatitis B (600,000), haemophilus influenzae type b (386,000), pertussis or whooping cough (294,000), tetanus (213,000) and others such as yellow fever (36,000), diphtheria and polio. Of the 2.1 million, 1.4 million were children under the age of five.