What is World Immunization Week?

On the eve of World Immunization Week 2019, here is all you need to about the significance of this WHO awareness programme.

By: Editorial Team | | Published: April 23, 2019 8:39 pm

Increasing accessibility of and awareness about vaccines is one of the most important objectives of the World Immunization Week 2019. © Shutterstock

World Immunization Week 2019 starts tomorrow. Celebrated through the last week of April, this is a week-long WHO campaign that promotes vaccination to prevent the spread of infectious ailments. Every year, approximately 3 million lives are saved from fatal communicable diseases like pneumonia, viral hepatitis, diphtheria, measles and cholera with the help of immunization. The death toll of measles reduced significantly between 2000 to 2017 and polio is about to be wiped off due to efficient immunization plans adopted by various governments worldwide. Vaccination also works as a cost-effective machinery for the governments to achieve various other health goals that include improving adolescent health, antenatal and newborn care. Also Read - Sanofi’s booster vaccine can protect preschoolers against four major diseases

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However, a lot needs to be done in this field to bridge the huge gap that still remains. Still today, the world hosts 20 million unvaccinated and under-vaccinated kids. According to some estimates, in the year 2017 itself, 1.5 million children lost their lives to diseases preventable by vaccines. These figures point to issues such as difficulty in access to vaccines, confusion about them among families and the likes, increasing the importance of making immunization easily accessible to all and creating mass awareness programmes. It is also in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations. Increasing accessibility of and awareness about vaccines is one of the most important objectives of the World Immunization Week. It is one among the eight most important official campaigns of the WHO. Also Read - Measles vaccine drive to target 45 million children in developing countries

Theme of World Immunization Week 2019

Protected Together: Vaccines Work! is the theme for this year. Emphasising on the significance and necessity of immunization, this event is going to celebrate ‘Vaccine Heroes’ worldwide. The ‘heroes’ include volunteers and health workers as well as parents who have all contributed to make immunization a worldwide success.

Objectives of the programme

A lot of progress has been made in the field of immunization with 113 countries introducing new vaccines since 2010 and more than 116 million kids being vaccinated in 2017 alone. However, a lot needs to be done yet, to meet the deadlines of eliminating certain ailments. Eradication of measles, rubella and maternal and neonatal tetanus is way behind the schedule. Also, there have been outbreaks of various other ailments which could have been kept at bay with vaccines. Unfortunately, kids of the marginalised and financially weakest communities are worst affected. So, the efforts need to be intensified at the policy and implementation levels to ensure that more lives are saved with immunization. With these aims, the WHO has formulated key objectives for the World Immunization Week 2019:

To elucidate the importance of vaccines for everyone including children
To emphasise the importance of creating immunization programmes through investment in order to bridge the gaps.
To explain how all-round immunization in a routine manner will help in fulifilling the goal of universal health coverage.

History of World Immunization Week

It was in May 2012 that World Immunization Week was recognised by the World Health Assembly. But before that, activities around the immunization week used to take place on different dates across different parts of the world. After 2012, 180 countries became part of the WHO campaign and resolved to work together for vaccination.

UNICEF Campaign: #VaccinesWork

As the World Immunization Week starts tomorrow, UNICEF will be launching a new campaign, #VaccinesWork. It will run along with the World Immunisation Week with the goal of reiterating the power of vaccines to safeguard everyone’s health. This campaign has been used worldwide for long to provide a common online platform to the advocates of vaccination. This year, UNICEF’s partners for this campaign are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the WHO and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. They have joined hands to increase the outreach.

In a bid to ensure that every child gets the vaccines they need, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will pay USD$ 1 to UNICEF for each like or share of April social media posts that use the hashtag #VaccinesWork. The amount can go up to USD$1 million.

We want the awareness that #VaccinesWork to go viral, said Robin Nandy, UNICEF s Chief of Immunization in a press release. Vaccines are safe, and they save lives. This campaign is an opportunity to show the world that social media can be a powerful force for change and provide parents with trustworthy information on vaccines,” he added. This is part of the WHO’s 2019 World Immunization Week theme.

More children than ever before are being reached with vaccines today, said Violaine Mitchell, Interim Director of Vaccine Delivery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in an official communication. We are delighted to work with UNICEF and all the global and country partners around the world who are working tirelessly to ensure all children, especially those in the world s poorest countries, can be protected from life-threatening infectious diseases, she added.

UNICEF has created a 60-second animated film as part of its #VaccinesWork campaign. The film, named Dangers, showcases animal illustrations of social media posts and talks about the truth that kids, by their very spontaneous reckless nature, endanger themselves. The short animation video is available in multiple languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, Hindi, Russian, Spanish and Tagalog. It further elaborates that while it is not possible for parents to save their little ones from all possible dangers, immunizing them properly will eliminate some of the risk factors for sure. In addition, during the launch programme, UNICEF experts will be answering multiple queries about immunization: How vaccines function, how they are tested, the necessity of vaccinations, risk of skipping immunizations, so on and so forth.

Published : April 23, 2019 8:39 pm

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