World Immunization Week (April 24-30) brings together a diverse coalition of partners to promote the use of vaccines to protect people of all ages against disease.
World Immunization Week 2021 will aim to:
- Reframe the global vaccine conversation to focus on the importance of vaccines
- Highlight the many ways in which vaccines enable us to live healthy, productive lives by preventing the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases
- Demonstrate social proof that the broader public already values and trust vaccines
- This year’s campaign looks to build solidarity and trust in vaccination as a public good that saves lives and protects health.
The theme “Vaccines Bring us Closer” aims to unify health and immunization partners, organizations, and individuals around the story of how vaccines bring us closer to the moments, people and goals we care most about, enabling good health and wellbeing for everyone around the world.
Background Information:
For over 150 years vaccines have provided protection against diseases that would otherwise prohibit our progress and development as a species. With their help, we can live, love, and interact -collaborating for the success of our species with less of a burden from diseases like measles and polio, which cost humanity hundreds of millions of lives.
Vaccines themselves continue to progress, bringing us closer to a world free from the likes of tuberculosis and HPV, and towards eradicating childhood diseases including polio and measles. Ground-breaking approaches to vaccine development are changing the science of immunization forever, bringing us closer still to a healthier future.
Vaccines bring us closer to ending the COVID-19 pandemic
1.Vaccines have allowed us to thrive by protecting us against dangerous diseases. They will help bring us closer again to doing what we love with those we love.
2.Vaccines bring us closer to global connectivity, movement and travel.
3.Vaccines bring us closer to children going back to school.
4.Vaccine research brings us closer to a world where we are better prepared against outbreaks.
Vaccines bring us closer to a world where no one suffers or dies from a vaccine-preventable disease
1.Immunization is one of the best ways to provide children with a healthy start and protect people’s health throughout their lives.
2.Vaccines help bring an end to diseases.
3.Vaccines are bringing us closer to eradicating polio.
4.Research into vaccines today prepares us for diseases that may occur in the future.
Vaccines bring us closer to a healthier, more prosperous world:
- Diseases can spread quickly across borders and affect every community. Vaccines provide protection for all.
- Once people are protected against disease, economies and businesses can open up and thrive.
- Vaccines give everyone an equal chance of living a healthier life, free from the threat of preventable disease.
Vaccines are a critical new tool in the battle against COVID-19. Working as quickly as they can, scientists from across the world are collaborating and innovating to bring us tests, treatments and vaccines that will collectively save lives and end this pandemic.
Safe and effective vaccines will be a game changer: but for the foreseeable future we must continue wearing masks, physically distancing and avoiding crowds.
Key Messages:
Message 1: Vaccines bring us closer to doing what we love with those we love.
- We have sacrificed so much to keep our loved ones and community safe from COVID-19: family reunions, hugs from loved ones, meals with friends and colleagues;
- Now, vaccines offer us the clearest path back to normal. Along with other measures like mask-wearing and physical distancing, equitably protecting people with safe and effective vaccines will help end the pandemic and bring us closer again;
- Thanks to decades of research and advances in vaccine science and technology during the pandemic, we will also be better prepared to handle diseases past, present and future.
Message 2: Vaccines bring us closer to a world where no one suffers or dies from a vaccine-preventable disease.
- Vaccines are one of the greatest scientific innovations of all time. In the past century, they have brought us closer to ending polio and helped us eradicate smallpox. Thanks to vaccines, today billions of people live healthy lives protected from vaccine-preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough;
- In just the last 30 years, child deaths have decreased by over 50%, thanks in large part to vaccines. Vaccines now help protect against more than 20 diseases, from pneumonia to cervical cancer and Ebola;
- Still, millions of children miss out on basic childhood vaccines every year. Increasing access to vaccines everywhere is the best way to give every child a healthy start to life and protect against preventable diseases from birth into old age.
Message 3: Vaccines bring us closer to a healthier, more prosperous world.
- In today’s interconnected world, an outbreak anywhere is a threat everywhere. Vaccines are one of the best tools we have to improve health and wellbeing around the world;
- Immunization helps children grow into healthy adults. Vaccinated, healthy children can attend school and reap the benefits of education, and their parents are able to participate in the workforce, putting communities on the path to greater economic prosperity;
- Immunization also reaches more people than any other health service, connecting families with health care systems and ensuring everyone has access to the care they need.
Useful Links:
Link to the WHO World Immunization Week site:
https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-immunization-week
Link to WHO page on vaccines and immunization:
https://www.who.int/health-topics/vaccines-and-immunization#tab=tab_1
Link to WHO FAQs on vaccines and immunization: What is vaccination?
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