World Immunization Week 2024
World Immunization Week takes place every year in the last week of April and was officially established by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2012. The World Immunization Week will be held for the 13 time from 24 to 30 April 2024. Aim is to raise awareness of the need for collective action and promote the use of vaccines to prevent people of all ages from diseases.The campaign seeks to save lives by increasing global vaccine coverage and ensuring that people understand the critical role immunizations play in public health. Immunization saves millions of lives every year and is widely recognized as one of the world’s most successful health interventions. Yet, there are still nearly 20 million children in the world today who are not getting the vaccines they need, and many miss out on vital vaccines during adolescence, adulthood and into old age.
World Immunization Week
24 to 30 April 2024
This year, World Immunization Week marks the 50th anniversary of the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), celebrating our global efforts to save and enhance countless lives through protection against vaccine-preventable diseases. It also calls on countries to increase investments in immunization programs to safeguard future generations.
In just five decades, we’ve transformed a world where many parents feared the loss of a child into one where every child, when vaccinated, has the chance to survive and thrive.
World Immunization Week theme 2024:
Humanly Possible: Immunization for All
Let’s achieve this by:
- Prioritizing vaccines at the top of government agendas in every country
- Advocating for vaccines to be a core component of healthcare planning and investment throughout all stages of life
- Ensuring vaccination programs are fully funded and properly resourced in every nation
- Driving research and innovation to expand access to and support for vaccines
- Raising awareness about the impact of vaccinations on local, national, and global levels
The World Immunization Week focuses on several key objectives:
- Highlighting the role of vaccines: Vaccines are one of the most effective and cost-efficient ways to prevent serious diseases like measles, polio, and influenza, among others.
- Increasing vaccine coverage: By promoting vaccination programs, the campaign encourages people, especially in underserved regions, to get vaccinated, thereby reducing preventable diseases.
- Combating misinformation: World Immunization Week also seeks to counter misinformation about vaccines and promote confidence in their safety and effectiveness.
- Advocating for stronger health systems: It emphasizes the importance of strong health systems that can ensure equitable access to vaccines for everyone, including those in remote and vulnerable populations.
For over 200 years, vaccines have protected us against diseases that threaten lives and prohibit our development. With their help, we can progress without the burden of diseases like smallpox and polio, which cost humanity hundreds of millions of lives
Whilst vaccines aren’t a silver bullet, they will again help us progress on a path to a world where we can be together again.
Vaccines themselves continue to advance, bringing us closer to a world free from the likes of TB and cervical cancer, and ending suffering from childhood diseases like tetanus and measles.
Investment and new research is enabling groundbreaking approaches to vaccine development, which are changing the science of immunization forever, bringing us closer still to a healthier future.
Source: WHO
More about the history of vaccination:
The story of vaccines did not begin with the first vaccine–Edward Jenner’s use of material from cowpox pustules to provide protection against smallpox. Rather, it begins with the long history of infectious disease in humans, and in particular, with early uses of smallpox material to provide immunity to that disease.
Evidence exists that the Chinese employed smallpox inoculation (or variolation, as such use of smallpox material was called) as early as 1000 CE. It was practiced in Africa and Turkey as well, before it spread to Europe and the Americas.
Edward Jenner’s innovations, begun with his successful 1796 use of cowpox material to create immunity to smallpox, quickly made the practice widespread. His method underwent medical and technological changes over the next 200 years, and eventually resulted in the eradication of smallpox.
Louis Pasteur’s 1885 rabies vaccine was the next to make an impact on human disease. And then, at the dawn of bacteriology, developments rapidly followed. Antitoxins and vaccines against diphtheria, tetanus, anthrax, cholera, plague, typhoid, tuberculosis, and more were developed through the 1930s.
The middle of the 20th century was an active time for vaccine research and development. Methods for growing viruses in the laboratory led to rapid discoveries and innovations, including the creation of vaccines for polio. Researchers targeted other common childhood diseases such as measles, mumps, and rubella, and vaccines for these diseases reduced the disease burden greatly.
Innovative techniques now drive vaccine research, with recombinant DNA technology and new delivery techniques leading scientists in new directions. Disease targets have expanded, and some vaccine research is beginning to focus on non-infectious conditions such as addiction and allergies.
