In Tajikstan, 10-year-old Mehrdod is vaccinated as part of 2004’s first national immunization campaign against measles. The campaign aimed to reach almost 3 million children, some 50 per cent of the total population of the country.
UNICEF/ HQ04-0650/Giacomo Pirozzi
With the exception of clean water, nothing else is more effective than immunisation at reducing diseases and saving lives.
Today vaccines protect nearly three-quarters of the world’s children against major childhood illnesses that could kill them. Immunisation rates for the six major vaccine-preventable diseases – pertussis (whooping cough), childhood tuberculosis, tetanus, polio, measles and diphtheria – have risen from under 10 per cent in the 1970s to nearly 80 per cent today.
Yet, every year, more than 1.4 million children die from the six major diseases that could be prevented by low-cost vaccines.
How UNICEF helps
UNICEF supplies more vaccines than anyone else, reaching 40 per cent of the world’s children. For example, in the last fifteen years, it’s delivered 10 billion doses of the polio vaccine to over two billion children. And the programme is working. Polio is a highly contagious disease which can cripple or kill children in hours but, thanks to immunisation, it’s on course to become the second disease to be wiped off the earth. Vaccines have already wiped out Smallpox. UNICEF’S work in increasing immunisation for children helps avert more than 2.1 million deaths annually and countless episodes of illness and disability.
UNICEF also works with governments and non-governmental organisations, where children are most at risk, to conduct National Immunisation Days, immunising millions of children in a period of days. In emergencies, such as the Pakistan Earthquake or the Boxing Day Tsunami, we work hard to provide measles immunisations and extra doses of Vitamin A (which helps the body fight diseases) and ensure that children weakened by disasters are not then killed by preventable disease.
In conflict situations, UNICEF collaborates with other UN partners and the UN Secretary-General’s Office to negotiate temporary cease-fires between warring factions to give health workers access to children. Political or rebel leaders are encouraged to sign a “Days of Tranquility” agreement for all vaccination days in their regions and are given information about the life-saving role of immunisation.