Child health: Vaccine launched to help ward off pneumonia

Officials say people need to take routine vaccinations seriously.

ISLAMABAD: If Pakistan were to run out of vaccine, millions of children will suffer and it would be a national disaster. This was stated by Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) Alliance Deputy Chief Executive Officer Helen Evans at the launching ceremony of pneumococcal vaccine in the country’s Expanded Programme on Immunisation at a local hotel on Tuesday.

While talking to i, Evans said, GAVI Alliance believes Pakistan will make all-out efforts to deal with the expected short-term emergency. Meanwhile, GAVI, United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), World Health Organisation (WHO) and Ministry of Inter-Provincial Coordination (IPC) will discuss how to tackle this challenge.

“There is a need to clarify roles and responsibilities after the health ministry’s devolution,” Evans said. She further said currently Pakistan is facing challenges in health sector but GAVI believes that the country will overcome it.

In Pakistan more than 352,000 children die before reaching their fifth birthday and almost one in five of these deaths are due to pneumonia. The new pneumococcal vaccine cannot prevent every case of pneumonia but they do immunise a significant number of children, said an official.

WHO Representative in Pakistan, Dr Guido Sabatinelli said the rate of routine immunisation is 60% in Pakistan which needs to be improved and vaccines for routine immunisation should be easily available.

IPC Secretary Anis Husnain said unless we increase our routine immunisation coverage to at least to 90%, it would be difficult to sustain our gains in polio eradication and elimination of measles and neonatal tetanus.

Speaking on the occasion, Unicef Pakistan Country Representative Dan Rohrmann said, “As the first country in South Asia to introduce the pneumococcal vaccine, Pakistan’s commitment to immunise all children against vaccine-preventable diseases is to be applauded. “

Some mismanagement was witnessed at the launching ceremony when Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf could not make it after keeping the audience waiting for two and half hours because of a meeting with the President of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

IPC Minister Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani was asked to be the chief guest and another half an hour was spent in making amendments to the speech which was supposed to be delivered by the premier.

Another confusion that seemed to have propped up at the event was over the exact number of infant deaths caused by pneumonia in Pakistan every year. At the occasion, key speakers representing various national and international organisations had different statistics to share with the audience on the subject, some said it is 27,000, some quoted 35,000 and the documentary which was shown said it is 80,000.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 10^th, 2012.