World Immunization Week: How Innovation is Combating Emerging Threats

Immunisation, a key component of primary health care, is a safe and effective medical tool aimed at promoting global health, currently saving almost 5 million people annually. It is considered a cost-effective option to avert many infectious diseases, assisting people to lead healthier lives. Immunisation provides and sustains an immunological memory of pathogens contributing to infectious diseases thereby preparing the immune system to elicit a response to secondary infection. Though we have almost 25 regulatory-approved successfully implemented vaccines, a large fraction of the population is not ready to take vaccinations (aptly termed Vaccine Hesitation by the World Health Organisation). To promote awareness among the public on the need for immunisation against various vaccine-controllable infectious diseases, World Immunisation Week is celebrated annually during the last week of April. This is achieved by the universal expansion of immunisation programmes and establishing a robust critical vaccine supply chain for people in all communities thereby promoting the well-being of individuals. ?

A vaccine is defined as a biological preparation(mainly attenuated/ killed microorganisms, subunits of exterior surface or genetic material, treated toxins, antibodies,?lymphocytes, or messenger RNA), that is administered primarily to prevent?disease?by activating the body’s response against a pathogen through active or passive immunity. From the time of development of the first vaccine in 1796 by Edward Jenner to treat smallpox,?novel methods have been tried and tested to develop successful vaccines.?Vaccine research grew by leaps and bounds reducing the mortality rate and disability from various infectious diseases. Timely immunisations act as armour in combating preventable diseases and keeping them at bay. When people in a specific population are immunised against an infectious disease the risk of person-to-person spread gets nullified, leading to protection of an entire population against an infectious disease outbreak. Commonly termed as herd immunity or community immunity, this has considerably reduced the prevalence and spread of many infectious and communicable diseases Vaccines can be given as single dose or multiple doses in a definite time interval for combating infectious diseases. Multiple vaccine doses as booster doses create long-lived antibodies and memory cells which would be of immediate use when exposed to the pathogen in future.

Vaccine development is a rigorous, complex and expensive process from preclinical development to process development and cGMP-compliant manufacturing. With the advent of novel infectious diseases having sporadic outbreaks (like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome- SARS, H1N1, swine flu, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome MERS, Ebola virus, Zika virus, Corona Virus) where the identity of the causative pathogen was not known beforehand, vaccines (like recombinant viral vectors, nucleic acid-based approaches, recombinant proteins) acted as saviours to global health security. Many of these vaccines were released without the usual time phases of clinical research. To combat this, CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) has come forward in the creation of investigational stockpiles with deep knowledge databases and developing advanced vaccine candidates which could be used for effective, speedy responses to pandemic outbreaks.

Though the success rates of vaccines are very high, immunisation drives are highly challenging due to fear of side effects contributing to vaccine hesitancy. Many myths (such as vaccines would be an overdose for the immune system to handle, the vaccine causes neurological diseases, vaccines contain toxins, the attenuated microorganisms can cause disease meant to be prevented in healthy individuals etc.) pull back people from getting immunised. The benefits of vaccination in preventing mankind from life-threatening diseases are much higher than minimal side effects that disappear in a short time such as reddening, mild fever or nausea. People should be educated more on the safety of vaccines and advised to embrace novel vaccine technologies that would prevent or reduce infectious diseases.

Many bottlenecks are identified in the long and risky development of a fruitful vaccine.

DDE, being a turn-key provider joins you in this endeavour of safe and efficient vaccine design and development. The 21st?century taught us the importance of saving millions of lives through global immunisation. Let us embrace the theme of this year’s World Immunization Week “Humanly Possible” in all senses and enable immunisation for all a reality, through our commitment towards the community as a whole forgetting caste, gender, race and age. We are ignorant about infectious diseases that would challenge us with outbreaks in future but we can always be armed to face them through immunisation and hope to see light at the end of the tunnel.

?#HerdImmunity #VaccineHesitancy #VaccineConfidence #VaccineSafety #VaccineDevelopment #NewVaccines #ImmunizationEducation #StopTheSpread

Vaccine Valley 诺华 Vaccinex Vaccine Insights The World Vaccine Congress Washington Champions for Vaccine Education, Equity and Progress Vaccine and Immunotherapy Evaluation Seattle Vaccine Trials Unit Vaccine Considerations Project International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI)

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