More needs to be done for vaccination

Vaccination Week, a campaign to promote the use of vaccines, which falls on April 24-30 this year, is also a time to celebrate. In China and elsewhere in the world, virtually every child is vaccinated, with phenomenal results: each year, 2.5 million newborn children are kept alive with a simple shot in the arm.

The most affordable method of disease control known to man, vaccines have eliminated previously terrible diseases such as smallpox, an illness that killed 500 million people in the 20th century alone. Following a global vaccination campaign, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared in 1980 that this killer disease had been eradicated. Today we are on the verge of wiping out polio, an infectious disease that can cause paralysis. Recently the WHO declared all of Southeast Asia to be polio-free, and although hard-to-reach pockets still exist, it is worth the effort required to consign polio to the dustbin of medical history.

Yet if smallpox is gone, and polio nearly so, why have other serious diseases not disappeared as well? Despite the overwhelming success of vaccines generally, barriers remain that prevent wider adoption which could save lives. One obstacle is simply inadequate access. For every five children saved by a vaccine, another three die because of a lack of access, especially to newer vaccines.