EUROPE/SWITZERLAND – One child out of 5 does not receive life-saving vaccinations

Geneva (Agenzia Fides) - Every year, one child out of five does not receive life-saving vaccinations and the need for vaccines to be kept constantly in cold temperature is a serious barrier to the improvement of the coverage rates of vaccination.
Vaccines need to be kept at a temperature between 2°C and 8°C. This was the alarm launched by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) on the eve of World Immunization Week, which opens today (April 24 to 30). "In our experience – says the statement sent to Fides Agency - the need to keep vaccines in cold temperature during the journey is one of the biggest barriers to effective immunization". Although this is not an insurmountable problem in rich Countries, it constitutes, however, a major obstacle in developing Countries. This difficulty is one of the causes of the low vaccination rates in some Countries, and this is why each year more than 22 million children under one year of age is not vaccinated. Mounting evidence also shows that some vaccines can be kept out of the cold chain for a certain period of time. In the so-called "chain temperature-controlled" (CTC), some of these can leave the cold chain for a short period just before they are used, which would facilitate the logistics of transporting it in the final and crucial stretch of its journey, from the last health center to the remotest villages. (AP) (Agenzia Fides 24/04/2014)