Giving Compass' Take:

· Around the world, immunizations are reported to save from 2 to 3 millions lives a year. Development Policy Centre of Australia discusses the importance of vaccines and the critical role they play in eradicating disease. 

· How can we accelerate the spread of vaccines to places in need? How will a widespread availability of vaccines affect the annual global death rate?

· Although vaccines do not address every disease, they provide help for those most at risk of serious illness. Read more about how vaccines are saving lives and money.

Each year, World Immunization Week is also the week of ANZAC Day, when we acknowledge the achievements and sacrifices of our military personnel. In 2018, two 100th anniversaries remind us that infectious diseases have taken, and still take, a greater toll than the loss of life in warfare:

  • It has been 100 years since the end of World War 1, which ended in November 1918, and claimed an estimated 20 million military and civilian lives.
  • It has also been 100 years since the outbreak of the deadliest influenza pandemic in history – the “Spanish flu” which claimed between 20 million and 100 million lives worldwide in 1918 and 1919.

It is also a time to remember the millions of preventable deaths that occur today due to poor health and nutrition, and to promote action to prevent these deaths.

Immunization is one of the most successful and cost-effective health interventions. Expanding access to immunization is crucial to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of healthy lives for all people at all ages. Currently, immunization prevents the deaths of an estimated two to three million people per year, but three million people, including 1.5 million children up to the age of five, still die from vaccine-preventable diseases each year.

Read the full article about immunizations by Mark Rice at Development Policy Centre.