Alive thanks to immunization – WHO report

Around 154 million of people’s lives have been saved thanks to global immunization efforts, including 101 million infants, Kazinform News Agency reports citing WHO study on vaccination’s contribution to saving people’s lives.

Referring to WHO’s investigation, immunization is considered as the single greatest contribution of any health intervention to ensuring babies to live. Within the last 50 years, vaccination against 14 diseases made a contribution to decreasing infant death by 40% in the world.

Among the most effective is the measles vaccination which saved about 60% of lives. However, 33 million children missed a measles vaccine dose in 2022. Preventive measures of measles outrage recommend coverage of 95% or greater with 2 doses. To present, globally coverage rate of the first dose of measles vaccine is 83% and the second dose is 74%. This fact has been resulting in a high level of measles outbreaks in the world.

The WHO investigation study vaccination result against 14 diseases. Thus, the number of saved lives is a cautious assessment. Currently, there are vaccines which protect from more than 30 life-threatening diseases. For example, more than 20 million people can walk thanks to vaccination against polio which has paralyzing effect on the ill.

It is expected that the HPV vaccine against cervical cancer in adults will save a number of lives since countries work towards raising immunization targets to eliminate cervical cancer by 2030.

Immunization programs have illustrated that the mutual work of many stakeholders, with heads of state, regional and global health agencies, scientists, charities, aid agencies, businesses and communities might bring positive outcomes.