Why childhood vaccines are a public health success story

December 23, 2024

3 hypodermic needles

(MIT Technology Review) – No vaccine is perfect, but these medicines are still saving millions of lives.

This year marks the 50-year anniversary of an ambitious global childhood vaccination program. The Expanded Programme on Immunization was launched by the World Health Organization in 1974 with the goal of getting lifesaving vaccines to all the children on the planet.

Vaccines are estimated to have averted 154 million deaths since the launch of the EPI. That number includes 146 million children under the age of five. Vaccination efforts are estimated to have reduced infant mortality by 40%, and to have contributed an extra 10 billion years of healthy life among the global population. (Read More)