June 10--WASHINGTON -- Making sure routine immunizations are delivered to poorer countries and low income families will result in a healthier global population, a group of health experts and policy makers said Thursday in Washington.
"Selfless, altruistic behavior actually produces selfish, utilitarian benefits," said Bruce Lee of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Graduate School of Public Health.
The group was making a pitch for funds to buttress a 10-billion stake by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which last year launched a "Decade of Vaccines."
The goal is to raise another 7 billion dollars. Those efforts are to be led by the nonprofit GAVI Alliance, formerly Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations.
GAVI has targeted 72 underdeveloped countries that suffer the highest mortality rates from preventable diseases.
Lee and his team demonstrated how delayed vaccination distribution to poorer areas of the US capital Washington, for example, would actually increase the spread of a typical influenza virus.
A 30-day delay could allow about 4,000 new cases of the virus to develop in such a densely settled, poor population through frequent travel to work and other locations. He said there would be no new cases if the immunization was carried out immediately.
Underdeveloped countries are often slow to receive and administer even routine vaccinations, a problem that the Decade of Vaccines intends to address.
And there is no vaccine for malaria, for which there is an intensive effort underway.
"Every 45 seconds a child dies (from malaria) in Africa," Christian Loucq of PATH malaria vaccine initiative said. "That's not a problem, that's an emergency."
By ramping up vaccine development and delivery over the next 10 years, however, the deaths of 6.4 million children could be prevented, a study by Meghan Stack of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said.
Boosting childhood vaccination rates to 90 per cent for some of the world's deadliest diseases, including pertussis and measles, could also have great economic benefits, Stack said.
Increased vaccinations over the decade could save 151 billion dollars in treatment costs and lost productivity, Stack found.
Detailed articles were published Thursday in the newest edition of Health Affairs journal that focusses on health policy research.
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