18 / 34
Page 55
Journal of Clinical Immunology and Allergy
ISSN: 2471-304X
16
th
EuroSciCon Conference on
Immunology
M a r c h 1 1 - 1 2 , 2 0 1 9
Am s t e r d a m , N e t h e r l a n d s
Immunology 2019
D
espite the generalized consensus that most effective technologies are useless if not widely used, between the discovery of
the various effective vaccines and their widespread use it has always elapsed a long time. In the past, among others, two
main factors have justified this long gap of time: widespread use of vaccines implies a complex managerial and logistic delivery
system; and the introduction of new vaccines imply costs. Money is not always available, particularly in developing countries.
In 1974, the EPI programme approved by WHO and recommended to be implemented all over the world, was a gigantic step
forward to create the managerial and logistic system to deliver vaccines. At same time, a new era of vaccine promotion started,
to raise conscience of vaccines as one of the most cost/effective measures in public health. However, even after the EPI was
widely adopted all over the world, there has been always a considerable period, between the discovery of new vaccines and their
introduction in EPI national programmes. In recent years, a lot of progress had been made in vaccine research and development
and a great number of new vaccines were approved for public use and some are still on the pipeline. However, the time between
the approval of a vaccine for public use and its effective widespread use is still much more than the desirable and there still are a
lot of underutilized vaccines. To complicate the situation, in the last 10 to 20 years, an unexplainable anti-vaccine lobby has been
very active, involving many Medical Doctors, to discourage the general public to use vaccines. On the other side, the paradigm
of the original EPI programme was based on vaccines for children and women in the fertile age. This was understandable,
because, at the time, the important task was to address priority problems. In the last 20 to 30 years, the conscience of the health
professionals has moved to realize that there are also very useful and effective vaccines for teenagers, elderly people and adults
that should not remain underutilized. Consequently, the EPI paradigm has changed, to include a much bigger number of vaccines.
With well-established EPI Programmes in almost all countries of the world, the managerial and logistic delivery system problems
are solved (or at least, they are not very constringent any more) and the financial constraints to bring to widespread public use an
increasing number of vaccines became the main issue, but not the only one. Therefore, nowadays, the great challenge is how to
reduce the time gap between the approval of a vaccine for public use and its effective widespread use. In this paper, the author
uses his wide technical and managerial skills and experience to present suggestion on how to minimize this problem.
helderfbm921@gmail.comBringing to widespread public use latest
technologies and innovations in vaccines and
immunization: a point of view from a developing
country, Mozambique
Helder Fernando Brígido MARTINS
Public Health Planning and Management
J Clin Immunol Allergy 2019, Volume:5
DOI: 10.21767/2471-304X-C1-009