The World Health Organization (WHO), working in partnership with both public and private sectors, has a proud history of vaccinology.
By assessing vaccines for global supply, WHO’s groundbreaking Prequalification programme has made possible the deployment of quality-assured, safe and effective vaccines to dozens of countries across the world. This programme gives countries the security and confidence to know that vaccines being purchased meet WHO standards for safety, effectiveness and quality.
The Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), created by WHO in the 1970s, has, with the help of UNICEF, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and others, brought lifesaving vaccines to hundreds of millions of children around the world. The immunisation programme is found in every country on the globe. It has the farthest reach and deepest impact of any public health programme. WHO staff have supported governments and health professionals to deliver vaccines where they are needed on the ground. Its success is measured in millions of lives saved each year. Through vaccination, smallpox has been eradicated and polio is on the verge of being defeated
On constant alert, every year, WHO studies influenza trends, to work out which strains are emerging and should be included in the next season’s flu vaccine. And it continually monitors potential signals of pandemic threat.
WHO estimates that in 2018 (the latest year for which estimates are available), 25,000 newborns died from neonatal tetanus, an 88% reduction the figure of 200,000 in 2000.
Global HPV vaccine coverage is increasing. HPV vaccines had been introduced in 106 countries by the end of 2019, representing a third of the global population of girls.
Today, 86% of the world’s children receive essential, lifesaving vaccines, increasing from around 20% back in 1980. This protects them and their communities against a range of infectious diseases, including measles, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), hepatitis B and polio. The number of children paralysed by polio has been reduced by 99.9 percent worldwide over the last three decades.
This level of protection comes through a strong global effort to increase vaccine access and affordability, with support in recent decades from new partnerships like Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance - focussing on expanding vaccine availability in the poorest countries - and the Measles & Rubella Initiative.
Credit: WHO / Mark Nieuwenhof
Innovative partnerships have also seen WHO help lead major cholera and yellow fever vaccination campaigns, and have also produced effective vaccines against meningitis and pneumonia, diarrhoea, and the world’s first-ever malaria vaccine currently being piloted in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi.
Ebola
We have known about Ebola since the 1970s, but the disease hit the headlines in 2014–2016 when an epidemic in West Africa killed more than 11 000 people. This epidemic triggered the first human trials of a vaccine against the disease and prompted changes in the way the world responds to outbreaks
To tackle the threat of Ebola, one of the biggest priorities was to fund vaccine discovery, fast-track clinical trials, hasten regulatory approvals and enable manufacturers to produce and roll out an Ebola vaccine. From early testing to trials of the rVSV-ZEBOV Ebola vaccine in Guinea in 2016 took the sum of ten months, a speed unprecedented at the time.
The Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) declared a new outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Bikoro in Equateur Province on 8 May 2018. Vaccination began on 21 May.
“I just spent the day out with the vaccination teams in the community, and for the first time in my experience, I saw hope in the face of Ebola and not terror,” said WHO’s Dr Mike Ryan.
When Ebola hit eastern DRCin August 2018, the vaccine was used just days after the declaration of the outbreak. More than 300 000 people were vaccinated from August 2018 to March 2020, which heped to save lives and slowed the spread of Ebola.
Credit : WHO / Lindsay Mackenzie
As the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine was not licensed, it was used under “compassionate use” as part of ongoing research studies. Those who volunteered to take part in the DRC study provided consent, and safety was monitored when they were followed up after vaccination. The results from the DRC vaccine studies confirmed that the vaccine is effective in preventing Ebola. The vaccine was licensed in the United States and Europe in late 2019. Earlier this year after WHO prequalified the vaccine, it was licensed in DRC and five other African countries.
