Posts tagged vaccines

Dear GAVI Campaign | Vaccines: The right tools for this job? 

You know what it’s like when you don’t have the right tools for the job?

We do - because to protect children right now, we have to use vaccines that aren’t well suited to the job they have to do. We need better-adapted vaccines to reach the one in five children currently unprotected by full immunisation.

Find out more: msfaccess.org/vaccines

MSF Access: Dear GAVI Campaign

Children are now protected with 11 vaccines; up from six vaccines a decade ago. The price of vaccinating a child has sky-rocketed. It cost $1.37 to vaccinate a child 10 years ago, now it’s $38.80. That’s a whopping 2,700 percent increase. So how do we decide how many vaccines children need? Is it based on how much money 

Help MSF and send GAVI a message on Twitter asking for them to open up their lower prices to non-governmental organisations and humanitarian actors like MSF now.

CLICK HERE TO SEND A TWEET.

MSF Access: Dear GAVI Campaign

The GAVI Alliance negotiates price reductions for newer vaccines and, through its donors (such as the UK, the US and Norway), pays for these vaccines to be introduced in developing countries. MSF has requested that GAVI and vaccine manufacturers extend their discounted prices to us and so far, we have been given the run-around. NGOs and humanitarian actors are partners in extending access to vaccination. Particularly in the world’s poorest countries, we help deliver health services, and in some areas, NGOs are the only actors able to access children with vaccines.

Help MSF and send GAVI a message on Twitter asking for them to open up their lower prices to non-governmental organisations and humanitarian actors like MSF now.

CLICK HERE TO SEND A TWEET.

Photo: Vaccines in Mali 2012 © Venetia Dearden/VII Fatal NeglectVaccines: A Preventable Fate Twenty percent of all the babies born in the world each year—the equivalent of nearly five times the children born yearly in the United States—are not getting the basic vaccines they need to be protected from killer diseases, such as measles. And that’s why Venetia Dearden traveled to West African nation of Mali with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to see firsthand the importance of vaccines to families and the lengths to which they must go to get them. When MSF teams stage vaccination campaigns in the West African nation of Mali, mothers will come from hours away, sometimes days away. In the best-case scenario, MSF and other agencies would bring the vaccines to them, wherever they lived, in whatever conditions. But this isn’t possible at present, because many of the vaccines available today are not tailored for the difficult environments in which they must be used. To give but one example: establishing and sustaining cold chain is very difficult in places where electricity is hard to come by, to say nothing of ice. That’s why MSF has been advocating for a global approach to vaccine development and dissemination that takes into account the conditions in the countries where these vaccines are most needed to half preventable deaths, as well as the particular strains of diseases found in various locations.

Photo: Vaccines in Mali 2012 © Venetia Dearden/VII

Fatal Neglect
Vaccines: A Preventable Fate

Twenty percent of all the babies born in the world each year—the equivalent of nearly five times the children born yearly in the United States—are not getting the basic vaccines they need to be protected from killer diseases, such as measles.

And that’s why Venetia Dearden traveled to West African nation of Mali with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to see firsthand the importance of vaccines to families and the lengths to which they must go to get them. When MSF teams stage vaccination campaigns in the West African nation of Mali, mothers will come from hours away, sometimes days away.

In the best-case scenario, MSF and other agencies would bring the vaccines to them, wherever they lived, in whatever conditions. But this isn’t possible at present, because many of the vaccines available today are not tailored for the difficult environments in which they must be used. To give but one example: establishing and sustaining cold chain is very difficult in places where electricity is hard to come by, to say nothing of ice. That’s why MSF has been advocating for a global approach to vaccine development and dissemination that takes into account the conditions in the countries where these vaccines are most needed to half preventable deaths, as well as the particular strains of diseases found in various locations.

Fatal Neglect:  The Global Health Revolution’s Forgotten Patients

Today we’re launching a six-part film series that tells the stories of patients left behind by the global health revolution. VII Photo Agency’s Seamus Murphy, Venetia Dearden, Ron Haviv, and John Stanmeyer document the impact of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, the three deadliest neglected tropical diseases — (visceral leishmaniasis (kala azar), Human African Trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), and Chagas — and vaccine-preventable diseases.

Vaccines: The Price of Protecting a Child from Killer Diseases “Adding new vaccines to the national immunization program is like taking out multiple mortgages.”—Ministry of Health Official, Kenya Each year, the lives of two and a half million children are saved because they are protected against killer diseases through vaccination. Vaccinating with new vaccines should save many more lives, but high prices could prevent this from happening.

Vaccines: The Price of Protecting a Child from Killer Diseases

“Adding new vaccines to the national immunization program is like taking out multiple mortgages.”—Ministry of Health Official, Kenya

Each year, the lives of two and a half million children are saved because they are protected against killer diseases through vaccination. Vaccinating with new vaccines should save many more lives, but high prices could prevent this from happening.

Daniel Berman, deputy director of the MSF Access Campaign, gives our staff a presentation on the Access Campaign’s upcoming vaccine report and his impressions from the World Vaccine Congress held in DC last week.

Daniel Berman, deputy director of the MSF Access Campaign, gives our staff a presentation on the Access Campaign’s upcoming vaccine report and his impressions from the World Vaccine Congress held in DC last week.