Health Curriculum: Unit 6--Main text: Grades 7-11

Fighting Disease:
Health At The End Of The Millennium
Another Wired Curriculum from The United Nations CyberSchoolBus

	Introduction
	How They Work
	How They Spread
	Poverty and Disease
	Prevention
	Immunization

Unit 6
Immunization

MAIN TEXT
(GRADES 7-11)

What It Takes

In practical terms what does it really take for immunization to work?

Global cooperation
All the efforts and initiatives have required national and international mobilization, beginning with the research and development through the transport and delivery of the vaccine all the way to the actual shot.

Information gathering and surveillance
Each nation and each political subdivision within each nations needs to have in place a well organized disease reporting network. Surveillance for adverse reactions to immunization must also be in place. This is needed to monitor the effectiveness of the vaccines, learn what the problem actually is and to maintain public confidence in the immunization program.

Over half of the vaccines used in national immunization programmes each year are produced in developing countries.

Vaccine quality
Over two billion doses of vaccine are produced each year, most of it in countries where quality control may not be at an adequate level.
[Guaranteeing Quality...]

Safe transport
A network of transportation systems and coolers, called the Cold Chain, has been developed to ensure that vaccines reach their destination without losing their effectiveness.
[The Cold Chain...]

Economics
The cost of vaccination is far lower than the costs of illness and treatment; whereas organizations like UNICEF secure low prices for poor countries, there is still not enough funds to cover all children with the basic vaccines and no other vaccines have been added to the EPI-six, even though the vaccine for hepatitis B, developed 15 years ago, has been recommended
[Vaccine Value...]

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