Vaccines have been responsible for preventing countless numbers of death throughout the world. In the cases of rotavirus diarrhea and pneumococcal pneumonia, new vaccines stand to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children each year from these diseases within the developing world. In fact, immunization is one of the most cost-effective methods of intervention in child health. Despite this fact, still 2 out of 5 children under five years old die from either diarrhea or pneumonia. The issue can be traced back to the lack of resources that the global community is neglecting to allocate to developing vaccines for these diseases. Such allocation is important to reaching Millennium Development Goal 4, which is to reduce under-five child mortality by two-thirds by 2015. This goal can not be achieved without commitment from the global community to support immunization.
There is hope yet based on our history with vaccines. UNICEF’s Measles Initiative and Rotary International’s Polio Eradication Initiative are two examples of successful programs that lead to the eradication of two highly infectious diseases.
Jimmy Carter and Kofi Annan discusses in depth of the importance of vaccines in the developing world in their co-authored blog post featured on the Huffington Post.
In regards to controlling and eliminating neglected tropical diseases, The Carter Center has a Schistosomiasis Control Program as well as a Guinea Worm Eradication Program both in Africa. These programs target school-aged children, who are most vulnerable to these diseases, and widely distribute drugs within communities on a yearly basis.
