As World Immunization Week begins, UNICEF urges everyone to remember vaccination is best investment in children's survival

Beijing, 26 April 2016 – As China joins the global celebration of World Immunization Week (24-30^th April), UNICEF calls on parents, community members and Government to celebrate the benefits of strong, robust and safe public vaccination systems, which saves up to 3 million young lives globally each year.

China's national immunization programme started in 1978, with initial support from UNICEF and WHO.  Today, China's Expanded Programme on Immunizations (EPI) vaccinates over 15 million newborns and 60 million people every year. 

Thanks to China's successful immunization programme, China and the Western Pacific as a whole were declared polio free in 1999 (which was reconfirmed in 2012). Due to clean birth delivery coupled with children's tetanus immunization, WHO declared China to have achieved maternal and neonatal tetanus elimination in 2012.

“This World Immunization Week is incredibly important as the world stands on the cusp of eradicating polio. Plans for a globally coordinated and simultaneous introduction of a new vaccine in all countries are underway. This is an essential step in enabling the scourge of polio to be eradicated - a disease that has caused death and disability for so many children over so many years. And China's contribution is key to ensuring this global milestone is reached.” said Rana Flowers, UNICEF's Representative in China.

World Immunization Week is also an opportunity to acknowledge the enormous contribution China's immunization programme has made to dramatically reducing child deaths and child illnesses caused by preventable diseases, including polio, hepatitis B, tetanus, pertussis, diphtheria, measles, meningitis, and Japanese encephalitis.

Strong vaccination efforts in China have dramatically reduced the prevalence of chronic hepatitis B infection to less than 0.32 per cent among children under five years of age – exceeding the regional goal of 2 per cent. More than 80 million children who would otherwise have been infected with hepatitis B were born free of the virus as a result of this intervention. Two vaccines (Japanese encephalitis and influenza) are now pre-qualified for international sales, which further attests to the high quality of China's immunization programme.

“Vaccines are a child's first defence against illness and death from many preventable diseases. Vaccination of preventable childhood killer diseases is one of the world's greatest public health achievements.  The child survival revolution, started in the 1980s, which saw vaccination programmes rolled out nationally across the developing world, has saved millions of children's lives. UNICEF knows from global experience that immunization is one of the most successful and cost-effective public health interventions a country can make to reduce child mortality and protect its children. Immunization has also been instrumental in eradicating smallpox and nearly eradicating polio in the world,” said Ms Flowers. “China's own success in building a national immunization programme is a critical factor in why China was able to dramatically reduce under five mortality and achieve the Millennium Development Goal well ahead of schedule.”

In March this year, the sale and distribution of nearly expired vaccines, without proper storage, through private providers to public facilities has drawn renewed public and government attention to the importance of effective and safe vaccines, and to good storage and distribution systems. UNICEF welcomes the efforts by the Chinese Government in prosecuting those responsible as well as for having taken immediate action to change regulations and prevent similar events from happening in the future.

With these new regulations in place, parents can rest assured all vaccines obtained from public facilities will be safe and effective. UNICEF supports the Government in continuing to invest in a strong, safe and universally accessible public immunization system, and to continue to strengthen regulations where needed, as to guarantee that  all children have free and safe access to all life-saving vaccines especially against major childhood illnesses.

UNICEF also urges the Government to continue its global leading role in immunization, having reached near universal coverage with most of the vaccines included in the EPI programme. This is particularly important at a time when the global community, in order to further protect its children against vaccine preventable diseases, is introducing a new polio vaccine in China and throughout the world.

UNICEF encourages Chinese parents to learn about the protection provided to their children by vaccines, and continue to seek vaccination services from authorised providers that are recognised by the National Health and Family Planning Commission, which will help protect their children from preventable disease and death.

Background on UNICEF's global role in vaccination

UNICEF and its partners support immunization programmes in over 100 countries to help all children reach their full potential. Activities include:

• Communication for development to work with communities and create demand for vaccines.
• Vaccine procurement and cold chain: for vaccine purchases and delivery, improving cold chains and monitoring. In 2014, UNICEF procured 2.71 billion doses of vaccines for a value of nearly US$1.5 billion.
• Policy support and technical assistance to help government partners to improve routine immunization services and roll out immunization campaigns more effectively, to reach each and every last child.

UNICEF is the world's largest buyer of vaccines, reaching 40 per cent of the world's children.

UNICEF is a core partner of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), the Measles and Rubella Initiative; the Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus Elimination (MNTE) initiative; and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), in addition to working closely with sister UN Agencies, donor and programme countries governments, international development and finance organizations and the pharmaceutical industry to make immunization accessible to all children.