This week, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, announced that Hungarian-American biochemist Katarin Carrico and American immunologist Drew Weisman have won this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine. The research work they won the award laid the foundation for developing a vaccine against COVID-19. Backed by the same results, multiple research groups around the world are working to develop new, more effective and safe vaccines, including against certain types of cancer.
The history of vaccines dates back to the late 18th century, when British physician Edward Jenner developed the first smallpox vaccine. Nearly 200 years after Jenner vaccinated the first patient, humanity celebrated the disease’s global eradication in 1980. Once this milestone is reached, the power of immunization in controlling infectious diseases becomes apparent.
In the world of vaccination, once you have overcome the challenges of developing a vaccine, you must face the challenge of making it available to as many people as possible. Global vaccination coverage has made significant progress over the past century; however, significant challenges remain in its equitable distribution.
Inequalities in the distribution of all vaccines in Latin America and the Caribbean have worsened over the past decade. The region has gone from having one of the highest childhood vaccination rates in the world to lagging behind, even on the verge of being overtaken by Africa. In this corner of the world, some 2.4 million children have not yet received a full complement of major vaccines, including many who have not received any doses. It is ethically unacceptable that one in four children in our region is exposed to vaccine-preventable infections such as hepatitis B, measles, or tetanus. Poverty, reduced funding for health systems and growing political and social instability on the continent appear to be the reasons for the sudden decline in vaccination coverage.
In many areas of Colombia’s interior, the situation is not that different from what is described. While in big cities vaccination coverage figures are comparable to those in the first world, in our geographically remote areas vaccination rates struggle to surpass those of the poorest countries on earth.
Now, when the same factors that have led to worsening coverage in Latin America and the Caribbean appear to be converging in our country, we as a civil society must sound the alarm, because our survival and that of our loved ones will also depend on enacting strong and universal national immunization program.
It would be unfortunate if, while the world celebrated the development of new vaccines, we returned to a time when we deeply regretted deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases.
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