Mandela calls for greater investment in global vaccination

Former South African president Nelson Mandela has called for action by private and public organisations to promote vaccination and save the 8000 children who die every day from diseases that can be prevented by vaccines.

His call follows publication of a World Health Organization report highlighting the growing gap between rich and poor countries in access to vaccination. Low investment by donors is a major reason for this, says the report.

In a foreword to the report, Mr Mandela, chairman of the Vaccine Fund Board, urges international organisations and governments to “meet your moral and financial commitments to the world's children and make a greater investment in immunisation.”

The report states that although substantial progress in immunisation was made in the 1990s, wide variation between rich and poor countries persists. Targets were achieved in wealthier nations, but in some low income countries vaccination rates are at their lowest in over a decade.

The report says that less than a quarter of Nigeria's children were vaccinated in 2000, half the proportion of 10 years ago. Immunisation rates also plummeted in countries experiencing political upheaval and war. Around 30 000 people died in the early 1990s when low immunisation rates and economic crises in Eastern Europe triggered a major epidemic of diphtheria, which spread to Finland, Germany, and Norway before it was contained.

The report calls for more investment and better cooperation within the global community to tackle the problem.

“While new initiatives to fight killer diseases abound, it is the hard cash that is missing,” says Dr Daniel Tarantola, director of WHO's Vaccines and Biologicals department. “The global campaign for access to medicines and vaccines needs to be backed with political and financial commitment if we want it to get beyond words and make a difference for people.”

The Global Alliance for Vaccines, a partnership set up in 2000 of international organisations, governments, the pharmaceutical industry, and major philanthropists, aims to increase vaccination rates around the world. Together with its fundraising arm, the Vaccine Fund, it directs its efforts at the 74 poorest nations in the world, all with a gross national product per capita of less than $1000 (£635, €998), as well as China, India, and Indonesia.

Diseases thought to be under control, such as polio, could re-emerge unless effective vaccination programmes are in place, the report warns. And new infections could also appear.

It adds that the barriers to vaccination in developing counties include poor healthcare delivery systems, costs (especially of new vaccines), and research and development skewed towards rich nations. More than 30 million children born each year—one in four—do not receive any vaccination. Three million of these children die at some point in their lives from a disease that could be prevented by vaccination.

The State of the World's Vaccines and Immunization is available at www.who.int/mediacentre/events/report/en