Vaccines alone don’t save lives, vaccinations do. The fact that pneumonia, a disease that is one of the biggest infectious killers of children aged under 5 across Africa, is largely preventable through vaccines attests to this. Developing and sustaining new ways of reaching communities with the most acute needs is key to avoiding further preventable deaths.
Currently, pneumonia still claims the lives of 2,000 children globally every day, even though many of these deaths could have been prevented through safe and effective vaccines that are both recommended by the World Health Organization and which all countries have had access to for more than a decade. And even though there are enough doses to go around, there are still significant bottlenecks preventing them from doing so.
Ever since Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, started to make pneumococcal conjugate vaccines, or PCV, available to lower-income countries in 2010, we have seen huge progress in increasing global coverage, with 63 countries introducing it, preventing an estimated 940,000 deaths. However, ensuring that all the necessary pieces are in place so that doses reach people requires considerable investment, political will, planning, resources, and technical assistance.
About the authors
Dr. Endie Waziri
Dr. Endie Waziri is the national coordinator of the National Stop Transmission of Polio program at the African Field Epidemiology Network office in Nigeria, where she provides both technical and administrative oversight of the program with over 300 staffers. She is also the chairperson of the Gavi CSO steering committee.
Thabani Maphosa
Thabani Maphosa is Gavi’s managing director of country programs delivery, overseeing the vaccine alliance’s operations in 73 countries. The country programs delivery department’s raison d'être is to harness the power of Gavi for countries to save the maximum number of lives through immunization.
