<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>Global immunization efforts have saved at least 154 million lives in the past 50 years, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, adding that most of those to benefit were infants.</b></span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That is the equivalent of six lives saved every minute of every year of the half century, the UN health agency said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In a study published in the Lancet, WHO gave a comprehensive analysis of the impact of 14 vaccines used under the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), which celebrates its 50th anniversary next month.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“Vaccines are among the most powerful inventions in history, making once-feared diseases preventable,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“Thanks to vaccines, smallpox has been eradicated, polio is on the brink, and with the more recent development of vaccines against diseases like malaria and cervical cancer, we are pushing back the frontiers of disease,” he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“With continued research, investment and collaboration, we can save millions more lives today and in the next 50 years.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The study said infants accounted for 101 million of the lives saved through immunization over the five decades.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“Immunization was the single greatest contribution of any health intervention to ensuring babies not only see their first birthdays but continue leading healthy lives into adulthood,” WHO said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Over 50 years, vaccines against 14 diseases — diphtheria, Haemophilus influenza type B, hepatitis B, Japanese encephalitis, measles, meningitis A, pertussis, invasive pneumococcal disease, polio, rotavirus, rubella, tetanus, tuberculosis, and yellow fever — had directly contributed to reducing infant deaths by 40 percent, the study found.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For Africa, the reduction was more than 50 percent, it said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The vaccine against measles — a highly contagious disease by a virus that attacks mainly children — had the most significant impact.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">That jab accounted for 60 percent of the lives saved due to immunization, according to the study.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The polio vaccine means that more than 20 million people are able to walk today who would otherwise have been paralyzed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The study also showed that when a vaccine saves a child’s life, that person goes on to live an average of 66 years of full health on average — with a total of 10.2 billion full health years gained over the five decades, reports AFP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“These gains in childhood survival highlight the importance of protecting immunization progress,” WHO said, pointing to accelerating efforts to reach 67 million children who missed at least one vaccination during the Covid pandemic.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd/fas</div>