Abstract

According to the World Health Organisation (2011), vaccination is a global health program and development story that has continued to save millions of people every year. Despite the huge progress that has been made, there are more than 20 million people and especially infants who do not have sufficient access to vaccines. Stalling progress has been noted in some countries while there is a risk the being complacent will undermine past achievements. Globally, the number of children who continue to receive recommended vaccines has remained constant over the past few years. The report looks at the accessibility of vaccination facilities in the world among developing and developing countries. It addresses the possible causes of low accessibility and possible solutions to minimize child mortality.

Vaccines Accessibility in The World

Introduction

Vaccines have contributed greatly to a reduction in the number of diseases world-wide. Vaccines have reduced the risk of getting diseases by working with the natural immunity of the body defence to build a defence. When a person is vaccinated, the immune system responds. Currency, there are vaccines to prevent in excess of 20 life threatening conditions, as they help people of all ages to live longer and happier lives. vaccination is currently known to prevent more than 2 million deaths annually from diseases such as tetanus, influenza, measles, and diphtheria (Greenwood, 2014). Though there has been a great success in the attempt to bring vaccines closer to the people, the success is still very low in the low-income population in the African sub-Saharan countries. In the developing countries, the number of people being vaccinated is very low.

Vaccine Coverage

Vaccination Comparison by The Vaccine Type

Globally, three common vaccination are used as the reference on the extent of vaccination. The coverage of the third dose of diphtheria was 86 percent in 2018 which translates that from a figure of 135 million children below the age of one year mewing that 19 million children did not have the full dose vaccination with the first dose of diphtheria reaching 90 percent of the supposed recipient meaning that 13.5 million were not vaccinated in 2018. In the same year, 35 percent in the world got the rotavirus vaccination. In the same year, only 47 percent of all the intended recipients of the pneumococcal vaccines, the vaccines that protect children from pneumonia, received the vaccine (Maty, 2020).

Vaccine Geographical Coverage

According to Andre et al. (2008), not all children in the world receive the vaccination. The majority of the developing countries in the world usually have very low vaccination coverage. While the developed countries have a vaccine coverage of about 90 percent, most of the low income and middle-income countries have a vaccination coverage below 50 percent.  The majority of the countries in sub-Saharan African have very low coverage, while some countries such as Rwanda, Burundi, and Bangladesh have recently achieved very high coverage rates. Sources also indicate that it is not always the case that countries with high levels of poverty will have lower immunization.

Vaccination and Life-Saving

The world health organization (WHO) has indicated that vaccines prevent more than 2 million deaths every year. While it is no doubt that vaccination saves lives, getting the exact number is not possible. It is through vaccination that diseases like smallpox were eliminated from the face of the earth back in 1977, but it would be impossible to ascertain the number of people who would have been affected by the diseases today of the vaccine was not developed. However, reasonable estimates have indicated that between 1980 and 2018, the world would have lost between 150 to 200 million lives. The information highlights the difficulties in estimating the number of lives that that are saved by vaccines annually while at the same time underlining the importance of vaccines in saving lives (World Health Organization, 2011).

Methodology

The report collects survey data on vaccination in different parts of the world where the data is compared among the different counties. The countries are grouped according to the continents. Thus, the research adopts the secondary sources of data for the research. The sources are online sources such as websites, journals, and reliable magazines.

The data collected is the prevalence of immunization in different countries relative to their level of income or the general economic level. Immunization is usually administered to children who are below the age of years. The report thus looks at the rate of immunization among people in these age groups.

Results

The chart below gives a sample immunization data of the countries in the world. The countries have been taken randomly

Figure 1: A graph showing the uptake of vaccination among different countries

Analysis

From the chart above, it is evident that the developed countries, most of them in Europe, have the highest-rated of immunization, with Hungary achieving an immunization rate of 100 percent. On the other hand, the developing countries such as South Africa, Indonesia, Brazil, Austria and other countries in Africa and South America, the rate of vaccination is noted to be below 90 percent while in some countries like South Africa, the rate of immunization is as low as 74 percent.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries has an established immunization program based on their interpretation of the risks and the benefits associated with each of the vaccines. Evidence has indicated that their vaccines provide effective protection from diseases such as tetanus and measles. The data represented above represents the percentage of children that receive the vaccination in the recommended stage in their life. The age at which the complete immunization is supposed to be complete will vary from one country to another, and thus the representative diseases such as measles, tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis are taken as the indicative samples.

Causes of Low Rates of Immunization Among the Poverty Stricken/Developing Countries

It has been noted that there is a very low rate of vaccination among the developing countries and the developing countries. Some of the factors that are likely to have contributed to the low rates are discussed below:

Service Organization Problems

The responsible health organizations in these countries do not inform their members on the date and time that the immunization session will be taking place or even the location or the mode that will be used to carry the exercise. The immunization session is not frequent enough, and when they are frequent, they are located at locations that are not convenient to the people in the locality. In addition, the announced immunization dates will coincide with the family or farming duties meaning the immunization session will be foregone. Others include compromised quality of the vaccine due storage problems causing the drugs to expire. These regions are also affected by the shortage of vaccine equipment.

Staffing Problems

Most of the vaccination facilities do not have the required number of staff to carry out the vaccination process to the target population. The shortage is mainly occasioned due to inadequate training of staff or supportive service providers for a high-quality immunization service. There is also the perception where the health staff is viewed as hostile unapproachable by the parents. Others include the incorrect contraindication where children with minor illnesses are not immunized, and the missed opportunities to immunize were children taken for immunization are not immunized due to a reason that is not related to immunization.

Data Collection and Reporting Issues

There are inaccurate or incomplete collection and analysis, and thus the collecting authorities end up with incorrect information. In other cases, there is a reporting failure the monitoring data regularly lack of mechanism of following up the defaulters.

Solutions to The Problems

The relevant authorities in their respective countries can ensure there is a 100 percent vaccination of all children by keeping track of a child’s health record at any time they visit a health facility. For example, the government in these countries can come up with stringent measures that require that children must have up-to-date immunization to attend child care centers and pre-school facilities. The respective governments should be in the forefront to ensure vaccination is done at the same correct time by availing the services and sensitizing the members of the public.

Conclusion

The advantage of vaccination for any given population cannot be overemphasized. Research has clearly shown that vaccination is the most cost-effective way of ensuring a healthy population and a low rate of mortality, especially among the young population. However, it has been shown that there are some countries in the world whose population does not have access to these vital services. The government must ensure that its population gets the vaccination as well as sensitizing them on the importance of vaccination and having it done at the correct time.

References

Andre, F., Booy, R., Bock, H., Clemens, J., Datta, S., John, T., . . . Schmitt, H. (2008). Vaccination greatly reduces disease, disability, death and inequity worldwide. Bulletin of the World Health Organization,86(2), 140-146. doi:10.2471/blt.07.040089

Greenwood, B. (2014). The contribution of vaccination to global health: Past, present and future. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,369(1645), 20130433. doi:10.1098/rstb.2013.0433

Maty, M. (2020). Why Vaccinate? Retrieved from https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/why-vaccinate

World Health organization. (2011, March 04). Childhood vaccination in Africa and Asia: The effects of parents’ knowledge and attitudes. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/6/07-047159/en/