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Introduction |
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How They Work |
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How They Spread |
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Poverty and Disease |
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Prevention |
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Immunization |
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Unit 6
Immunization
MAIN TEXT
(GRADES 7-11)
IPs: Immunization Programs
 EPI
The Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) was launched by
the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1974. The success of
the program -- increasing immunization from 5 percent of all
children to 80 in a span of thirty years - came about thanks
to help from a coalition of partners:
 | Governments, the United Nations Development Program,
UNICEF, development agencies, banks and non-governmental organizations such as the Rockefeller
Foundation, "Médecins sans Frontières" and Rotary
International. |
| The involvement of political, religious and community
leaders amounted to what has been described as the
greatest social mobilization effort in peace-time.
Besides immunization, EPI has led to a number of other
positive results:
millions of health workers have been trained
a safe transport and storage network was set up
quality control mechanisms were developed for vaccine
production
opportunities were opened up for other primary health
care interventions such as giving vitamin and mineral
supplements
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CVI
In 1990, the World Summit for Children developed the
Children's Vaccine Initiative (CVI).
| The goals of CVI are to improve the global supply of
vaccines, improve the quality of vaccines and create
strategies that will help make vaccines affordable to
poor countries. |
| As with EPI, this program also depends on a global
partnership:
originally, it was the brainchild of five
sponsoring agencies: UNICEF, UNDP, the Rockefeller
Foundation, the World Bank, and WHO
today, the partnership is a global forum of
donors, governments, banks, development agencies,
researchers and public and private sector vaccine
manufacturers.
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GPV
The WHO's Global Program for Vaccines and Immunization
(GPV) was established in 1994 to integrate the three main
types of work needed in immunization:
| defining global immunization policy and providing
technical support to countries (done through EPI) |
| supporting research and development of new vaccines |
| ensuring the adequate production of vaccines and
helping governments accurately forecast and finance
their vaccination needs
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