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This entry in our series on “Vaccines: The Next 10 Years” comes from Caryl Stern, President and CEO of the United States Fund for UNICEF:
Like others in the global health arena, I was amazed and thrilled at the Gates Foundation’s $10 billion pledge to help research, develop and deliver vaccines to the world’s poorest countries.
UNICEF recognizes the incredible importance of vaccines (as well as the importance of insuring the cold chain and logistics systems necessary to actually get the vaccines into the people who need them) to basic child survival. Every year, UNICEF purchases vaccines and other immunization supplies reaching 56 per cent of children around the world, making it the leading global agency procuring vaccines for children. Over the last thirty years, immunization coverage of children for six killer diseases went from five percent to over 80 percent – that’s a major reason why annual under-five deaths have been cut in half since the 1960s.
That progress should not blind us to the fact that still nearly 9 million children under five die every year from largely preventable causes. We believe that number should, can – and must – be zero.
To respond to ongoing challenges in child survival and global immunization, in 2005 the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF developed the Global Immunization Vision and Strategy (GIVS), a global ten-year framework to fight vaccine-preventable diseases through 2015. GIVS sets a number of ambitious immunization goals, including cutting deaths due to vaccine-preventable diseases by at least two thirds from 2000 levels, and reaching national vaccination coverage levels of at least 90 percent worldwide.
One critical element of GIVS is to integrate other critical health interventions with immunization, in order to accelerate reduction in child mortality. UNICEF views vaccines as a means to an end – not the end itself. Immunization programs and delivery systems provide platforms to deliver other critically important preventive and curative health services, such as vitamin A supplements to prevent malnutrition, insecticide-treated nets for protection against malaria, and de-worming medicine for intestinal worms.
For example, new vaccines can only prevent a proportion of all cases of pneumonia and diarrhea. Parents worldwide need to understand that these new vaccines must be reinforced with other prevention strategies, such as breast-feeding, hand-washing, and better sanitation practices, along with knowledge of danger signs of illness.
Vaccines are incredibly important tools for saving children lives. By combining vaccines with other high-impact interventions into comprehensive, coordinated health care packages delivered to families who need them, we are building the health systems needed to ensure that we reach the day when no children, anywhere, die from preventable causes.
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