World Vaccination Week is celebrated every year in the last week of April. This year, until the end of the month, numerous activities are being proposed aimed at highlighting the effectiveness of vaccines in protecting and enhancing the population’s state of health.
This year we celebrate 50 years of the Expanded Vaccination Program (Expanded Program on Immunization), an initiative launched by the World Health Organization in 1974 with the aim of making vaccines available to everyone in the world, especially children at risk of life-threatening infections.
Global vaccination initiatives for various infectious diseases, conducted in the second half of the 20th century, are one of humanity’s greatest health successes: they have allowed the eradication of smallpox, the elimination of polio in almost all geographical areas of the planet, and improving the quality of life of millions of children.
However, it is estimated that twenty million children have not received one or more vaccines: wars, vaccine misinformation, and economic-financial crises are at the basis of this significant global inequality, which favors epidemics of vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles.
Initially, the Expanded Vaccination Program distributed 6 vaccines for childhood infectious diseases; Currently, 13 vaccines are recommended to be administered throughout life, while 17 have variable recommendations. In light of this new context, the program is called the “Essential Vaccination Programme”.
© All rights reserved
