The World Health Organization has called for further accelerating efforts to reach 5 million unvaccinated children in the South-East Asia Region.
According to WHO Regional Director Dr. Poonam Khetrapal Singh, their immediate priorities involve mapping the hard-to-reach areas and population, addressing the social and cultural and other barriers for them to access immunization services and closely monitoring these activities for progress.
“It is critical to identify who are missing vaccinations and reach them with lifesaving vaccines. Equity and improving vaccination coverage is the key to preventing a resurgence of diseases, especially the ones eradicated with painstaking efforts, and for further reducing diseases and deaths among children,” Singh said inaugurating a three-day meeting of Immunization Technical Advisory Group in New Delhi.
The WHO South-East Asia Region records about 37 million births every year, of them over 88% children are now getting three doses of diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus (DPT) vaccines annually, an indicator of basic vaccination coverage.
Many countries are making efforts, such as India’s Mission Indradhanush focusing on 190 districts; Indonesia’s intensified drive in 80 districts, Myanmar’s urban immunization intensification targeting 29 townships; Nepal’s efforts to achieve full-immunization at sub-district level; and Timor Leste’s community outreach and twinning programme with Sri Lanka for capacity building of vaccination programme officials.
In Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, nine massive vaccination campaigns delivered more than 4.5 million doses of life-saving vaccines to the Rohingya refugees.
These efforts successfully averted outbreaks of deadly diseases such as cholera and measles and helped rapidly curtail diphtheria outbreak among this vulnerable population, according to WHO.
For protection against pneumonia, diarrhea, Japanese Encephalitis and cervical cancer, the member states have added new vaccines to their immunization schedules. Hepatitis B control is getting a stimulus with vaccination.