Answer:
The World Health Organization (WHO), working in partnership with both public and private sectors, has a proud history of vaccinology.
By assessing vaccines for global supply, WHO’s groundbreaking Prequalification programme has made possible the deployment of quality-assured, safe and effective vaccines to dozens of countries across the world. This programme gives countries the security and confidence to know that vaccines being purchased meet WHO standards for safety, effectiveness and quality.
The Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), created by WHO in the 1970s, has, with the help of UNICEF, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and others, brought lifesaving vaccines to hundreds of millions of children around the world. The immunisation programme is found in every country on the globe. It has the farthest reach and deepest impact of any public health programme. WHO staff have supported governments and health professionals to deliver vaccines where they are needed on the ground. Its success is measured in millions of lives saved each year. Through vaccination, smallpox has been eradicated and polio is on the verge of being defeated
On constant alert, every year, WHO studies influenza trends, to work out which strains are emerging and should be included in the next season’s flu vaccine. And it continually monitors potential signals of pandemic threat.
WHO estimates that in 2018 (the latest year for which estimates are available), 25,000 newborns died from neonatal tetanus, an 88% reduction the figure of 200,000 in 2000.
Global HPV vaccine coverage is increasing. HPV vaccines had been introduced in 106 countries by the end of 2019, representing a third of the global population of girls.
Today, 86% of the world’s children receive essential, lifesaving vaccines, increasing from around 20% back in 1980. This protects them and their communities against a range of infectious diseases, including measles, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), hepatitis B and polio. The number of children paralysed by polio has been reduced by 99.9 percent worldwide over the last three decades.
This level of protection comes through a strong global effort to increase vaccine access and affordability, with support in recent decades from new partnerships like Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance - focussing on expanding vaccine availability in the poorest countries - and the Measles & Rubella Initiative.
