Since more than one million children in Pakistan are still routine vaccination, health experts met on Monday at Lahore for a one -week workshop focused on strengthening national immunization efforts.
When it comes to vaccination, Pakistan continues to face challenges of low absorption, public hesitation and distrust, operating bottlenecks and the unfinished struggle against poliovirus.
The National Vaccinology Workshop began today at the Pearl-Continental Hotel in Lahore and will be held until Friday.
The first day he brought together leaders who talked about topics ranging from the history of vaccines and the science of how they work to global immunization trends, coverage challenges and Gavi’s support. Gavi is a public-private association formed in the year 2000 that aims to improve vaccines in the poorest countries in the world.
The speakers on the first day included Professor Asad Ali, Dr. Junaid Iqbal, Professor Farah Qamar, Dr. Chaudhri Irtaza Ahmad and Dr. Richard Omore.
“What are the interventions that modern medicine has made to save most lives?” Professor Ali began asking the audience, before responding to himself: “antibiotics and vaccines.”
Despite being an advance in public health, he said, vaccines are expensive to develop and produce because the security threshold to manage them is much higher than for most medications, since they generally occur to healthy people.
“For years, access was largely limited to rich countries, until the launch of the Expanded Immunization program, through which international organizations group resources to support vaccine absorption worldwide,” he said.
Pakistan is currently Gavi’s largest receptor under its strategic phases 4.0 and 5.0, but experts warn that the country must begin to prepare for life beyond the support of donors.
Talking with Dawn.comDr. Omore pointed out Kenya’s experience, where the acquisition of vaccines faced transition challenges, including the critical shortage of vaccine stocks after the country crossed Gavi’s income threshold and lost support, which forced the government to quickly find their own funds.
He said that Pakistan should use the current support period to plan a transition without problems for immunization programs not to be interrupted.
Dr. Omore also emphasized the importance of continuous surveillance of the disease, pointing out that monitoring new strains and tracking the impact of the vaccine, as with human papilloma vaccines (HPV) or pneumococcal vaccines, is essential both to guide health policy and with the construction of public trust by showing evidence of reduced disease.
Today early, a poliovirus case was reported in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa tanks district, carrying the national count for this year to 24.
Last month, the World Health Organization announced that it is associated with the Pakistan government to train workers for the first HPV vaccine campaign in the country. Experts have also urged the defense of this impulse to guarantee success.
