As around 500 000 children die each year from vaccine-preventable diseases in  South East Asia Region, the health ministers and experts from 11 member States of the region have decided to step up efforts to increase and sustain immunization coverage in the region.

This was decided at a two-day high-level ministerial meeting of South East Asia region recently in Delhi. The ministers from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Myanmar and Nepal attended the conference, which  was inaugurated by Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. The WHO has declared 2012 as the Year of Intensification for Routine Immunization in the South East Asia Region.

Recognized as one of the most cost-effective and powerful public health interventions, immunization is critical to achieving Millennium Development Goal 4 (MDG 4): a reduction of deaths of children under the age of five. Despite the achievements in routine immunization in the region, the coverage is not uniform between countries and within different geographical areas in the same country, the meeting was told.

“About 10 million children still do not receive the third dose of DTP vaccine in the Region. Millions of children in the Region have no access to vaccines that are routinely given to children in the industrialized world” said Dr. Samlee Plianbangchang, WHO’s Regional Director for South-East Asia. “Access to safe and effective vaccines is a basic right of all children” he added.

Basic vaccines in routine immunization consist of four vaccines against six diseases namely BCG (vaccine against childhood tuberculosis), DTP (combined vaccine against diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus), OPV (vaccine against polio) and measles vaccines.

Reaching high-risk communities and those in hard-to-reach areas is one of the challenges to routine immunization in South-East Asia. Inadequate resource allocation and lack of trained health workforce add up to the low coverage in the Region. Inadequate vaccine delivery mechanisms and a weak cold chain infrastructure also pose a big challenge to effective immunization coverage.

In 2005, the World Health Assembly endorsed the Global Immunization Vision and Strategies (GIVS). One of the most important goals was to achieve 90 per cent immunization coverage nationally and 80 per cent coverage in all districts. However, only seven countries in South-East Asia Region had reached the national coverage of 90 per cent in 2010. Though these countries have reached the national coverage of 90 per cent, there are still districts with coverage below 80per cent.