AFP :
Global immunization efforts have saved at least 154 million lives in the past 50 years, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, adding that most of those to benefit were infants. That is the equivalent of six lives saved every minute of every year of the half century, the UN health agency said.
In a study published in the Lancet, WHO gave a comprehensive analysis of the impact of 14 vaccines used under the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI), which celebrates its 50th anniversary next month.
Thanks to these vaccines, “a child born today is 40% more likely to see their fifth birthday than a child born 50 years ago”, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “Vaccines are among the most powerful inventions in history, making once-feared diseases preventable,” he said.
“Smallpox has been eradicated, polio is on the brink, and with the more recent development of vaccines against diseases like malaria and cervical cancer, we are pushing back the frontiers of disease.” Infants accounted for 101 million of the lives saved through immunization over the five decades, said the study.
“Immunization was the single greatest contribution of any health intervention to ensuring babies not only see their first birthdays but continue leading healthy lives into adulthood,” WHO said.
