Our work in vaccines and immunization

Children’s best shot at a healthy life

PATH works for immunization the world over

Doesn’t every child in the world deserve a healthy start in life?

Often children’s best chance at health comes from vaccines that protect against life-threatening and ravaging diseases. This is especially true in the developing world, where health care can be hard to come by. Many families live more than a day’s walk from services or simply cannot afford to see a doctor, and they have nowhere to turn when they get sick. The prevention offered by vaccines is lifesaving.

Unfortunately, parents in the developing world can’t take it for granted that their children will receive such protection. Immunization services may fail to reach them, and vaccines are not available for many diseases that are endemic to poor countries.

That’s why PATH invents technologies and supports health systems to improve immunization worldwide. We are working toward a world where the most vulnerable are protected through equal access to vaccines.

Strong immunization programs save more lives

Vaccines already prevent more than two million deaths every year around the globe—and that’s not even counting the disabilities avoided. Globally, we could save another five million children if we could just get the most common vaccines to everyone. PATH partners with governments to help them build strong, resilient immunization systems that reach even the most remote villages:

• In Andhra Pradesh, India, we worked side by side with government officials to build a dependable immunization program with coverage rates almost as high as those in the United States. The government undertook costs of the successful program incrementally, ensuring its longevity.
• PATH and the Cambodian government broke down barriers to immunization, increasing nationwide vaccine coverage by 72 percent.
• Successful immunization programs ultimately depend on parents’ eagerness to have their children vaccinated. We helped the national immunization program in Vietnam reach out to parents and communicate the benefit of vaccination.

Extending scientific advances to the developing countries

How do governments decide which new vaccines to buy right away and which to postpone until prices drop in a few years? A lack of resources often forces countries to choose among needed vaccines, and health officials must focus on the biggest, most solvable problems first. They need reliable scientific data to make their decisions—and that’s where PATH comes in, providing evidence through research and working to get information to those who need it.

• To better understand the benefits and costs of introducing a vaccine against Haemophilus influenzae type B, which causes pneumonia and meningitis, PATH is conducting research in Senegal.
• We’re helping India and other countries in Asia make historic strides in protecting children from endemic Japanese encephalitis, which kills a third of its victims and causes severe disability in many more.
• By the end of 2007, young women in India, Peru, Uganda, and Vietnam will become the first in the developing world to have access to new vaccines for cervical cancer—as PATH and our partners begin pilot introduction programs in all four countries.
• Children shouldn’t die of anything as commonplace as diarrhea, yet it kills 1.8 million kids a year. Fortunately, new vaccines for rotavirus, which causes most cases of severe diarrhea, are available.

Private-sector partnerships will change the world

Market forces alone are not always strong enough to drive the development of vaccines for diseases that mainly affect poor countries. PATH engages the private sector and enlists them in our cause by providing resources, know-how, and experience working in developing-country communities.

• Many thought it could never be done. Now, through collaboration with researchers and vaccine developers, we know that a vaccine against the malaria parasite is absolutely a possibility.
• The Meningitis Vaccine Project (see www.meningvax.org), a partnership between PATH and the World Health Organization, is supporting the development, testing, and licensure of a meningitis vaccine that will not just halt the outbreaks that annually threaten millions in sub-Saharan Africa, but prevent them.
• Vaccines already exist for some types of pneumococcal disease, but they do not work as well for the types of disease found in many developing countries. PATH is looking for a pneumococcal vaccine that will protect children the world over against this deadly infection.

Technologies make immunization easier, safer

The technologies we advance—again, by partnering with the private sector—make vaccination safer and more effective. And they are designed for the special conditions found in the resource-poor settings where they’re used:

• Vaccine vial monitors are “smart” stickers. They tell health workers whether vaccine has been exposed to too much heat—or can be safely used for immunization.
• The radically simple Uniject™ device is so easy to use that even relatively untrained health workers can safely vaccinate infants in remote villages.
• Needle removers, safety boxes, and other safe-injection technologies help countries manage potentially infectious medical waste.
• Jet injectors use air pressure rather than needles to deliver vaccine as a fine stream of fluid.

Wherever they’re born, wherever they live

Because of vaccines, small pox is now eradicated globally, polio is nearly so, and, in countries where kids regularly get their shots, we don’t worry too much about diphtheria, measles, pertussis, and rubella. Immunization may be the most effective public health intervention of all time. At PATH, we’re working to make sure that the world’s most vulnerable children can also benefit from it.

Photo: Mike Wang.