China’s national immunization program has averted approximately 5 million deaths of Chinese children in its nearly 40-year history. During this year’s World Immunization Week, held 24-30 April, the World Health Organization (WHO) is urging parents to vaccinate their children – despite recent challenges to the vaccine system in China.
“The WHO’s best advice to parents of young children is this: vaccinate your kids! It’s the best way to keep them healthy, and safe from disease,” said Dr Bernhard Schwartländer, WHO Representative in China.
“Vaccines made in China are safe, pure and effective – WHO has looked carefully at China’s regulation of vaccine manufacturing on several occasions, and we are very confident in this. We also have full confidence in China’s world-class national Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) – which has achieved some remarkable results, including the elimination of polio in China in 2000, reducing chronic hepatitis B infection among young children by 90%, and reducing measles incidence by more than 99%,” Dr Schwartländer said.
“We understand that the activities recently exposed in Shandong have caused some parents to hesitate to vaccinate their children. But vaccination remains the safest, and in most cases only, way of protecting children against a range of nasty, in many cases fatal childhood diseases,” said Dr Schwartländer.
“The Shandong events exposed some serious problems with respect to regulatory oversight of how vaccines are distributed to the private market. While there is no doubt that these events have been damaging, the package of reforms to the system announced recently will not only ensure events like Shandong can never happen again, but will make the system stronger overall – including by making more life-saving vaccines available to all children in China,” Dr Schwartländer said.
"We are very pleased to see how swiftly the Government has moved to implement its package of reforms – with a new State Council regulation issued just this week to give effect to many of the reforms announced just recently," Dr Schwartländer said.
The State Council regulation will require ‘Category 2’ vaccines – those sold on the private market – to be distributed using the same high quality distribution and cold-chain system through which vaccines provided free-of-charge to all children through the national immunization program are distributed. A new vaccine tracking system, once implemented, will enable every dose of vaccine bought and sold in China to be traced at every step, from manufacturer, to warehouse, to distributor, to clinic, to the child.
“Vaccines are one of the most powerful tools we have in public health. They are parents’ allies in the fight against infectious diseases like polio, hepatitis B, measles, whooping cough, and diphtheria. Immunization is the only effective way to prevent these and other vaccine preventable diseases,” Dr Schwartländer concluded.
Note to editors:
The last week of April each year is marked by WHO and partners as World Immunization Week. This year’s global campaign focuses on closing the immunization gap – highlighting recent gains in immunization coverage, and outlining further steps needed to meet global vaccination targets by 2020.
For more information on the global campaign:
About the World Health Organization (WHO)
WHO is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. It is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends.