"Need unwavering commitment to reach all children with essential vaccines": Saima Wazed shares way forward on World Immunisation Week

New Delhi [India], April 25 (ANI): On the occasion of the World Immunisation Week, WHO Saima Wazed, Regional Director for WHO South-East Asia, shared insights on the goal of World Immunisation Week and elaborated on the 2025 theme-- "Immunisation for all is humanly possible."
In her remarks, Wazed highlighted that the World Immunisation Week, marked annually in the last week of April, promotes the use of vaccines to protect people of all ages against disease. The goal of World Immunisation Week is for more people - and their communities - to be protected from vaccine-preventable diseases, and the theme of 2025 is "Immunisation for all is humanly possible".
"WHO not only raises awareness about the value of vaccines and immunisation, but also ensures that governments have the necessary guidance and technical support to implement high-quality immunisation programmes," she said.
She noted that what started in 1974 as the Expanded Programme on Immunisation focused on six childhood illnesses and has today evolved to 13 universally recommended vaccines across the life course. In these 50 years, vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives - a remarkable 6 lives saved each minute, every day, for five decades. "More children now live to see their first birthday than at any other time in human history, and the measles vaccine alone accounts for 60 per cent of those lives saved. Immunisation campaigns have enabled us to eradicate smallpox, eliminate polio in our South-East Asia Region, and bring neonatal and maternal tetanus down to extremely low levels," Wazed said.
"It is clear that vaccines are, undoubtedly, one of humanity's greatest achievements".
Bringing to attention the WHO South-East Asia Region, Wazed observed that over 40 million pregnant women and 37 million newborns are vaccinated annually. "We are also a global leader in vaccine production, with 46 per cent of the world's supply. These achievements are significant, but we have much more to do. More than two million infants remain completely unvaccinated in our region, and approximately 650,000 do not receive all the recommended vaccines. Covid-19 also saw progress on immunisation stalls, resulting in the need for continued catch-up vaccination today. This is evident in the diphtheria and measles outbreaks that have unfortunately started occurring", she said.
She added, "World Immunisation Week 2025 arrives at a critical juncture. To safeguard this great public health achievement, we need unwavering commitment to reach all children with essential vaccines and to protect people against vaccine-preventable diseases".
Bringing into focus the recent changes in donor budgets in global health, Wazed noted that this has put a severe strain on immunisation programmes everywhere, and has also affected disease surveillance, laboratory networks and outbreak response capacities. The confluence of these could lead to tragic outcomes, and we urge national governments to boost their EPI investments to ensure the long-term sustainability of immunisation.
"We are at a crossroads. The hard-won gains in stamping out vaccine-preventable diseases are in jeopardy. We must choose the path of collaborative action, towards hope and health. In walking this path, we must strengthen health systems, address vaccine hesitancy, enhance surveillance, and ensure sustainable financing," Wazed noted.
In her concluding remarks, the WHO Regional Director underscored that the only way forward is together- governments, health organisations, communities, and individuals - to protect all the progress made, and continue toward a world where no one suffers from a disease that could have been prevented by vaccination.
"On World Immunisation Week, join us in spreading the message that vaccines are safe, vaccines save lives, and immunisation for all is essential. To do this would be to protect humanity's greatest achievement - vaccines - and protect humanity's greatest treasure - our children," Wazed emphasised. (ANI)