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Vaccines Cost Effective

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Background and context
Vaccines are among the most cost-effective health interventions of all time.
Despite this, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 1.7 million annual deaths among children under 5 years of age are due to diseases that could have been prevented by routine vaccination (WHO, 2010).
For example, although it is estimated that Expanded Programme on
Immunization (EPI) vaccines reach about 80% of children globally, the number of unimmunized children under 1 year of age who did not receive the three-dose diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine (DTP3) was 23.2 million in
2009 (WHO, 2010). Seventy per cent of these children live in ten countries:
Chad, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia,
Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan and Uganda (WHO, 2010). There are many factors that prevent children from being immunized, including political instability in a country, the strength of the immunization programme (e.g. number of health-care workers, facilities, cold chain), geographical location, and communication/ perceptions about the safety of vaccines. These barriers have been addressed in other documents (WHO, 2009a). The focus of this report is on increasing vaccine access though increased production.
In addition to the children who miss out on basic vaccines, there are huge inequalities in access to new vaccines between children in developed countries and children in developing countries. Furthermore, there are many poverty-related diseases for which vaccines do not exist, due to a lack of research and development (R&D) by industry. In the light of this, WHO has promoted activities to improve access to vaccines in developing countries, and to encourage the development of vaccines against poverty-related diseases for which there has previously been little incentive

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