The Decade of Vaccines Collaboration
By: Pedro Alonso and Chris Elias
The year 2011 will be remembered for at least two dramatic and opposing trends in global health – incredible progress in immunization and the episodic resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases.
Progress was hailed in July, when a Sudanese infant became the first child in her country to be vaccinated against rotavirus, marking a milestone in the fight against a diarrheal disease that kills half a million children world-wide. Two months later, the GAVI Alliance announced that it would immunize children in 37 countries with rotavirus and pneumococcal vaccines. Then, in October, the world cheered new evidence of the potential of a malaria vaccine when interim data from an ongoing phase III trial showed that vaccine candidate RTS,S reduces risk of the disease by half in African children ages 5 to 17 months.
Meanwhile, health workers in many countries sought to hold the line against re-emerging, vaccine-preventable diseases. In Dadaab, Kenya, they worked feverishly to vaccinate children against measles and prevent its spread across the world’s largest refugee complex as refugees arrived – malnourished, weak and often sick. The virus made headway elsewhere as well – including in Europe, which reported 30,000 cases of the disease and eight deaths in the first 10 months of 2011. Polio also attempted a comeback in 2011, including in China, where it reappeared 10 years after the country was declared polio-free, prompting the massive vaccination of 4.5 million people.
