News

Immunising children – one of public health’s best buys

2 August 2011

So says the GAVI Alliance, a global health partnership representing stakeholders in immunisation from both private and public sectors.

Countries around the world, including South Africa, are observing Immunisation Awareness this week, drawing attention to the fact that immunisation is the most effective preventative health care intervention in averting serious illnesses and deaths in young children. 

Immunisation can directly contribute to achieving goal four of the Millennium Development Goals, i.e. to reduce child mortality rates by two-thirds by 2015.

The benefits of immunisation are obvious – by helping healthy people stay healthy, vaccines remove a major barrier to human development. Immunised children have higher cognitive abilities and are more likely to attend school and go on to be productive.

By reducing illness and long-term disability, vaccines also generate savings for health systems and families. Health workers are freed up and parents spend less time looking after sick children.

In South Africa, the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) is working to “œreach and protect every child in South Africa with safe, high quality vaccines, delivered to the recipient using state of the art technology, whilst developing local skills and capacity”.

Our challenges are directly related to implementation and capacity to implement, which adversely affect the meeting of national and international goals and targets.

Recent estimates for South Africa reveal that immunisation levels have dropped since 1994:

• As many as 105,000 infants are not fully immunised in South Africa
• An estimated 400 000 children in South Africa are not fully immunised against measles
• 15% of deaths in children under five are due to diarrhoea and 9% are due to pneumonia, both vaccine preventable diseases of childhood
• Up to the end February 2011 nearly 19,000 cases of measles occurred in South Africa, of which 52 per cent were in children under 5

Private sector organisations like Discovery are supporting the National Department of Health’s goal of eradicating preventable childhood diseases. Discovery launched Immunise SA, in partnership with UNICEF, earlier this year, to improve the delivery of childhood vaccination.

Initial focus areas for the rollout of Immunise SA will include districts where children are least likely to be fully immunised in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal – provinces that have already recognised their gaps in providing full immunisation.

Vaccines are free of charge at public local clinics and community health centers in South Africa.