Routine clinics key to babies’ survival

There is something magical about a child under five – those baby years, when you witness their first smile, their first step, their first word.

Unfortunately, every year almost eight million children with entirely preventable diseases never make it to that special 5th birthday. And all too often the lack of a simple needle — your everyday baby checkup and immunisations — is the reason for this. Most of these deaths occur in developing countries.

While the task of delivering routine child immunisation equitably across the globe is easier to say than do, it is within our grasp.
However, over the past 10 years, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) working with stakeholders such as governments and health services, private philanthropists, civil society and multilateral organisations, pharmaceutical suppliers and financiers has started making inroads.
Since its establishment in 2000, GAVI has funded vaccinations that are estimated to have saved over five million lives against diseases such as measles, tetanus, whooping cough and yellow fever. That is, the population of Sydney, Singapore, Johannesburg or Los Angeles, all saved by the routine immunisation.
Through innovative funding arrangements, GAVI has reduced the price of vaccines to a fraction of their cost
Also, with GAVI’s support, vaccines are becoming available almost simultaneously in both developing and developed countries, extending the same opportunities enjoyed by children born in rich countries to those born in poorer countries.

GAVI’s support for routine cost-effective Haemophilus influenzae (Hib) vaccines for example, has seen the virtual elimination of Hib disease, which causes often life-threatening illnesses in young children such as meningitis and pneumonia, in a number of African countries including the Gambia, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi and Senegal.

Reducing deaths

In the Republic of the Congo, GAVI support for routine childhood immunisation against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), hepatitis B and Hib disease resulted in 91 per cent coverage in 2009.

In Rwanda, GAVI achieved more than 80 per cent coverage in 2009 against all the main childhood diseases, such as diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and Hib disease.

GAVI has also inspired new partnerships.

Australia is working closely with the Gates Foundation, as well as the United Kingdom and the World Health Organisation, to tackle a major threat to child and maternal health — malaria in the Mekong region.

Recently malaria resistant to artemisinin — the key component of the most effective malaria drugs — has appeared in the Thai-Cambodia border region and parts of Burma.

Our collaboration on containment efforts in the absence of a replacement drug are vital for preventing this resistance from spreading across Southeast Asia and potentially to Africa.

The nature of disease means that we cannot take a narrowly parochial approach – we must turn our efforts to where they are needed most.

The writer is the Australian Foreign Minister