Universal Vaccination Would Save 1.5 Million Children Each Year

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In 2017, the number of children immunized – 116.2 million – was the highest ever reported. The Region of the Americas achieved maternal and neonatal tetanus elimination, leaving only 15 countries yet to achieve elimination. Since 2010, 113 countries have introduced new vaccines, and more than 20 million additional children have been vaccinated.

Nevertheless, this year starkly illustrates how easily hard-won gains are lost. Because of low coverage nationally, or pockets of low coverage, multiple WHO regions have been hit with large measles and diphtheria outbreaks causing many deaths. The continued detection of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus is further evidence that national immunization programmes are not achieving the goal of reaching every child.

The Global Vaccine Action Plan set ambitious goals, and it remains the case that most targets will not be met by the end of the Decade of Vaccines in 2020. DTP3 and first-dose measles vaccine coverage have plateaued globally at 85%. Progress towards the eradication of wild poliovirus and the elimination of measles, rubella, and maternal and neonatal tetanus is currently too slow to be achieved by the end of the decade.

The 2018 Assessment report of the Global Vaccine Action Plan provides an update on work to achieve universal vaccination. Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2018 (WHO/IVB/18.11). Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO

There is a 149 page for 2018 on the status of global vaccination efforts.

Global Vaccine Action Plan

One of the five goals of the Global Vaccine Action Plan is to develop and introduce new and improved vaccines and technologies. The R&D focus is on potentially vaccine-preventable diseases responsible for a high global burden of disease, including malaria, HIV/AIDS, TB and seven other priority infections, and new technologies to facilitate vaccine delivery or wider use of vaccination.

The most advanced malaria vaccine, RTS,S/AS01 (Mosquirix®), has achieved a positive scientific opinion from the European Medicines Agency and is undergoing pilot implementation studies in three African countries. There are some concerns about its efficacy and safety, and further studies may be required to evaluate alternative dosing regimens and schedules. Multiple other vaccine candidates are at various stages of clinical evaluation, targeting different points in the malaria parasite life cycle.

Vaccine development for HIV remains an immense technological challenge, not least because of its great variability and mutability. However, the field has taken heart from the RV144 trial in HIV, the first to demonstrate protective efficacy, albeit modest. The laboratory identification of broadly neutralizing antibodies – recognizing multiples strains of HIV – has provided further impetus. As well as enabling studies that are informative for vaccine design, broadly neutralizing antibodies could be manufactured and used directly in prevention. The HIV vaccine pipeline includes multiple candidate vaccines undergoing clinical and pre-clinical evaluation.

Although a vaccine for TB, BCG, already exists, the current forms offer incomplete protection and have several drawbacks. Different vaccines may also be required to achieve different objectives in TB, such as prevention of initial infection or prevention of activation of latent TB. A wide range of candidate vaccines are progressing through clinical evaluation, with several showing positive results in early phase clinical trials.

Progress towards a universal flu vaccine has been more challenging, although a variety of vaccine candidates are in early stages of clinical evaluation.

Benefit of Eliminating Polio

Successful and sustained eradication of polio carries significant humanitarian and economic benefits: with no child ever again suffering polio paralysis, and upwards of US$ 50 billion saved, those funds can be used to address other public health needs.

Failure to sustain eradication would have significant consequences, however, with global resurgence of the disease, and as many as 200 000 new cases every single year, all over the world, within a period of ten years. That is why full implementation of resolution WHA71.16 on containment of polioviruses is so important.

Cold Chain

One in five children in the world are still not fully protected by even the most basic vaccines. About 22 million are at risk of contracting preventable diseases because they are under-vaccinated. This allows 1.5 million children to die every year from diseases that can be prevented by vaccination coverage.

Many rural areas in the world that do not have reliable power supplies. Vaccines need to be kept at particular temperatures, usually refrigerated, to remain effective. Cold chain conditions aren’t possible without power. A cold chain is a temperature-controlled supply chain that runs from the time the vaccine is produced until it’s administered. It holds the vaccines in a temperature of between 2°C and 8°C.

10 thoughts on “Universal Vaccination Would Save 1.5 Million Children Each Year”

  2. Vaccinations aren’t only about protecting YOUR child it’s about protecting all children. Try cranking down your paranoia a few notches.

  3. First off, I did get my child vaccinated. My point is this.

    1) No clinical trials have been done to test that tripling the dosage of aluminum or aluminum compounds has no detrimental effects.
    2) Parents are left with a choice of risking diseases or injecting an untested aluminum compound into a 7lb infant.
    3) I did not have the choice as a parent to be able to pick which brands of vaccines I want used to minimize the aluminum levels injected into my infant. We are expected to take this on faith, something I personally am not good at.
    4) Damage at the intramuscular site of the injection, in the form of lesions, has been conclusively proven. Who knows what else, considering there are no clinical trials.

    Anyone who has held their infant in their arms for the first time will be able to relate to the emotional impact. It is my job to protect him, something I take very seriously and do not care whether people like it or not, I am not taking him to the doctors to make friends. Just the fact that the FDA refused to do clinical trials is infuriating because it shows they really do not care what the parents think considering it would not be paid for out of their normal budget but as an addition to it. Therefore, anti vaxxers and the risks that brings. These vaccines, and the attitude of the FDA, need a serious look and clinical trials need to be done regardless of whether “they know” or not. Enough said, anyone who doesn’t understand that needs their heads examined.

  4. Any article that promotes vaccinations and completely fails to discuss the massive risks, injuries and deaths caused by vaccinations is either advertising, propaganda or a government psyop.

  5. One problem is that the adult vaccines (flu shots) still contain Mercury (Thimerosal). They even got an exemption from the UN Convention on Mercury to continue to use Thimerosal in adult vaccines. I am highly sensitive to all Mercury compounds and cannot have the vaccines as a result.

  6. First off, like mercury in Thimerosal, the aluminum in adjuvants is not elemental aluminum, but a chemical compound containing aluminum, which can have radically different properties (including, in terms of neurotoxicity) from straight aluminum. The canonical example used to illustrate this is that the two components of table salt are explosive in water (sodium) and poisonous (chlorine), but salt itself, in reasonable quantities, is quite safe. You would have to provide some evidence that those compounds have neurotoxic behavior to have grounds to worry.

    Furthermore, this paper: https://www.academicpedsjnl.net/article/S1876-2859(17)30483-7/fulltext suggests that vaccination does not correlate with blood or hair aluminum concentration. The very real dangers to your child of being unvaccinated are orders of magnitude greater than what you are worrying yourself about.

  7. Sort of true. They do receive more than that in breast milk, that is true. What makes it not true is that their bodies will remove it immediately and will not allow it to cross the blood brain barrier. This is not true with the aluminum in vaccinations, which has particle sizes specifically designed to not be passed by the body. These are picked up by the lymphatic system and move into the brain. There is not one thing I wrote that is not true. For another, the vaccines are tested by the FDA, but the adjuvants are not. They use aluminum because it has been used since the 1920’s or 1930’s, yet the amount of aluminum has tripled just since the 1980’s. Aluminum is a neurotoxic metal, and does end up in the lymphatic system. If this site allowed links to be posted I would be happy to show the research from government websites, but it does not. I promise you have not studied this the way I have. I had reason, you went to a website real quick to rebut my post.

  8. The amount of aluminum in a vaccine is less than what they’d receive drinking formula and way less than what they’d receive drinking breast milk. All vaccines containing aluminum have undergone clinical trials to prove their effectiveness. Your worries are based more on fiction then any real truth. Unfortunately the fiction that you choose to believe causes real harm to kids who can not be vaccinated.

  9. My son is now 9 months old, and I have to say these vaccinations worried me. The reason is that, while they removed mercury from most of them, they still contain aluminum. Unlike environmental aluminum where the body removes over 99% of it to protect itself, the aluminum in vaccines are designed to be too large for the body to remove. They travel through the lymphatic system and cross the blood/brain barrier, where they will remain in the child for the rest of the child’s life. Considering the sheer amount of aluminum now injected into infants, with zero clinical trials to determine safety, we are expected to trust the doctors on faith that they will not create a problem. Aluminum is a neurotoxic metal, and with no clinical trials to prove it is safe to have it accumulate in the brain, I am still really, really unhappy about it.

    The worst part is that in every doctors office we went to we were not allowed to choose which brand of vaccine we wanted used. They inject these all in one huge shot, with all the aluminum at once into an infant so small they can barely lift their arms. My parental protective instinct went into overdrive.

    The FDA was offered by Congress to receive funds to perform clinical trials and they refused. The reason is that they did not want to interfere with worldwide vaccination efforts. While the diseases these vaccinations are designed to protect against are vicious, I would be far happier not injecting neurotoxic metals into my infant as an adjutant.

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