Experts for ensuring routine vaccination during pandemic

LAHORE : While immunisation services have started to recover slowly from disruptions caused by Covid-19, millions of children remain vulnerable to deadly diseases in the country, health experts warned on World Immunisation Week, highlighting urgent need for a renewed commitment to improve vaccination access and uptake.

“While we focus on critically important vaccines to protect against Covid-19, there remains a need to ensure routine vaccinations are not missed”, said Dr M Akram Shah, National Programme Manager, Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), addressing a webinar here at the University of Health Sciences (UHS).

He said that a significant number of children missed their doses of lifesaving vaccines last year during the pandemic.

Dr Akram Shah added that despite progress when compared to the situation in 2020, the country might still experience disruptions to its routine immunisation services thus putting hundred and thousands of children at risk for diseases such as measles, diarrhea and polio.

“The pandemic has made a bad situation worse, causing millions more children to go unimmunised. Now that vaccines are at the forefront of everyone’s minds, we must sustain this energy to help every child catch up on their measles, polio and other vaccines. Vaccines have brought us closer, and will bring us closer again”, he maintained.

UHS Vice Chancellor Professor Javed Akram said that vaccines prevented more than 20 life-threatening diseases, helping people of all ages live longer, healthier lives.

“Immunisation currently prevents two to three million deaths every year from diseases like diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, influenza and measles’, the veteran physician added.

Regarding Covid-19 vaccine, Professor Javed Akram said that as of February 2021, at least seven different vaccines across three platforms had been rolled out. “More than 200 additional vaccines candidates are in development of which more than 60 are in clinical development”, he said, adding that the best Covid-19 vaccine is “the one that is available to you”.

Professor Javed Akram, who has recently been selected for the prestigious Excellence in the Profession Award by the Royal College of Physicians, said that five vaccines including CanSino, Sputnik V, AstraZeneca, Sinopharm and Sinovac had been approved for use in Pakistan against Covid-19. He added that CanSino vaccine in regional Pakistan-specific data showed 100 per cent efficacy at preventing severe disease and 74.8 per cent coverage for symptomatic disease.

While sharing data on immunisation in the country, UHS Public Health Department’s head Professor Fatima Mukhtar said, “In order to support the recovery from Covid-19 and to fight future pandemics, we would need to ensure routine immunisation was prioritised as we also focused on reaching children who do not receive any routine vaccines. To do this, we need to work together – across development agencies, governments and civil society – to ensure that no child is left behind.”

The webinar was organised by UHS Department of Public Health (DoPH) in connection with World Immunisation Week 2021 that takes place in the last week of April (April 24th-30th) to celebrate the lifesaving benefits of vaccines. This year’s theme, ‘Vaccines bring us closer,’ aims to show how vaccination connects us to the people, goals and moments that matter, helping improve the health of everyone, everywhere throughout life. Dr Shehnoor Azhar, Assistant Professor DoPH facilitated the webinar.