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Immunization Week 2024

24.04.2024

World Immunization Week will be observed in all countries from 24 to 30 April 2024.

For more than two centuries, immunization has helped humanity make the world a safer place—from the very first smallpox vaccine to the latest mRNA vaccines.

Vaccines protect each of us individually and enable us to protect our collective health.

The global vaccination campaigns carried out in the second half of the 20th century are one of humanity's greatest achievements.

Thanks to campaigns like these, we have eradicated smallpox, nearly eradicated polio, and ensured more children survive and thrive than ever before.

This year, World Immunization Week will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI), an occasion to recognize our collective efforts to save and protect countless lives from vaccine-preventable diseases and to call on countries to increase investment in immunization programs to protect the next generations.

In just five decades, our world has come a long way: if previously the threat of the death of a child made many parents feel fear, now every child - if vaccinated - has a chance to survive and develop successfully.

While the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) was designed to protect all children against six childhood diseases when it was created in 1974, it has now expanded to include 13 universal vaccines recommended throughout the life cycle and 17 additional vaccines that are assigned depending on specific conditions. As the vaccination program extends across the life cycle, we now call it the Essential Immunization Programme.

Progress on immunization has slowed in recent years during the pandemic. Although 4 million more children were vaccinated worldwide in 2022 than in 2021, 20 million children have not received one or more doses of vaccine.

Factors hindering vaccination coverage among these children include increasing conflict, economic recession and increasing vaccine hesitancy. As a result, the world is experiencing sudden outbreaks of diphtheria and measles - diseases that we have so far managed almost completely.

While global vaccination coverage is high—4 out of 5 children receive a full course of vaccinations—we have much more to do.

In the Republic of Belarus, according to the National Calendar of Preventive Vaccinations, which is financed at the state level, routine vaccination is carried out against 12 infectious diseases (tuberculosis, viral hepatitis B, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, hemophilic and pneumococcal infections, measles, mumps, rubella, flu).

In addition, vaccinations are carried out according to epidemic indications against 19 infections in individual professional groups; persons living in areas with a high incidence of natural focal infections; contact in foci of infections; when traveling to countries affected by yellow fever, etc.

Maintaining the achieved epidemiological well-being in relation to “vaccine-preventable” infections is possible only with the active position of each of us. Having universal access to high-quality and safe vaccines for immunization within the framework of the National Preventive Vaccination Calendar, knowledge of the possibilities of modern immunoprophylaxis and the importance of timely immunization of family members will ensure one’s own protection and the protection of others from infectious diseases and will become an investment in the health and well-being of children and adults throughout their entire life. life.

The information was prepared on the basis of electronic messages published on the websites of the World Health Organization and the Minsk City Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology.