This is the VOA SpecialEnglish Development Report.
Vaccines are special medicines to prevent diseases. They areusually given to children by injection. They have prevented millionsof deaths around the world. However, a new report says children inrich countries are getting most of the world’s vaccines.
The World Health Organization, World Bank, and the U-N Children’sFund, UNICEF, released the joint study in November. It says thatvaccinations are a powerful, low cost way to prevent the spread ofdiseases. However, the study found that twenty-five percent of theworld’s children lack protection from common, preventable diseases.
For example, only fifty percent of children in countries insouthern Africa are vaccinated during the first years of lifeagainst diseases like tuberculosis, measles, tetanus and whoopingcough. In some of the poorest developing countries, fewer than fivepercent of children are vaccinated against these diseases.
Officials say many developing countries are not able to buyvaccines used in industrial countries. In fact, UNICEF, the singlelargest buyer of vaccines for children, also has problems findingneeded medicines. This is because demand for vaccines is higher thanthe supply in the world market.
Daniel Tarantola heads the vaccine program for the World HealthOrganization. He says one way to solve the shortage problem is byhaving developing nations manufacture their own vaccines. This, hesays, would also help lower the cost of treatments in poorcountries. Doctor Tarantola believes the market for vaccines indeveloping countries could be huge. This is because more thanone-hundred-thirty-million children are born in developing countrieseach year.
The report says wealthy countries need to provide poor nationswith more aid money to help prevent the spread of diseases. Everyyear, industrial nations give more thanone-and-one-half-thousand-million dollars in aid for vaccinationprograms.
An extra two-hundred-fifty-million dollars a year would pay formajor vaccines for at least another ten-million children. Anadditional one-hundred-million dollars a year would cover the costof newer kinds of vaccines for those same children. Such newvaccines protect against diseases like Hepatitis B, which causesmore than five-hundred-thousand deaths a year.
This VOA Special English Development Report was written by JillMoss.