Apr 23, 2018
The World Immunization Week advocacy campaign is premised on the evidence, proven by decades of research, that vaccines are a safe and effective way to prevent many childhood diseases and deaths. This year’s theme, “#Vaccines work!” affirms the benefits of vaccines as invaluable in promoting health security and helping countries accelerate sustainable development. ACTION believes further that “a healthy society is a productive society” and supports immunization programs as central to ending poverty.
ACTION’s blog series for World Immunization Week offers a perspective from Pakistan of the fight to end poverty for good, the role of women in successful immunization efforts, ways to ensure that polio funding wind-down means a scale up for health systems funding, improving immunization rates in Africa, and lessons learned from immunization campaigns and transition in Latin America and the Caribbean.
This World Immunization Week, we’re exploring how to be “protected together” through immunization, and one of the best examples is polio eradication. Through world-wide cross-sector cooperation, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) has helped protect us all by removing the threat of paralysis and death from this preventable disease. As we get closer to the goal of a polio-free world, we must plan ahead so that polio eradication does not lead to the end of aggressive immunization efforts or of creating sustainable health systems.
Read More