THERE are ample reasons for most developing countries to celebrate World Vaccination Week as they unite under the slogan ‘Protected Together’. Countries such as India, Vietnam and China have strategically harnessed changing global political trends by investing in national policies to favour local production of rotavirus vaccines. Further, cost-effectiveness studies have led to sustainable, local costing mechanisms with domestic demand meeting the population’s needs for rotavirus vaccine self-sufficiency. Such initiatives have been useful in breaking the hegemony of big pharma, based in the global north, over essential, life-saving vaccinations required urgently by the global south. Although the government efforts to introduce rotavirus vaccine in Balochistan during World Vaccination Week 2018 are heartening, provincial-level vaccination challenges have only become more apparent — with measles campaign mishaps in Sindh and vaccinators reportedly going missing in Punjab after a police crackdown on their protest. Lack of vaccine coverage, incomplete vaccination and the absence of self-sufficiency at the federal level are the main reasons the country is consistently falling behind regional as well as global targets, despite vaccination being a crucial first point of healthcare contact.

When it comes to Pakistani children under five, vaccine-preventable diarrhoeal diseases and respiratory illnesses are the main cause of death. Initially, evidence was collected in the 1990s, under the auspices of WHO, implicating rotavirus in life-threatening diarrhoeal episodes. It is unfortunate that since then, a lack of national-level ownership — ie public health infrastructural and institutional investments — and deficient political will — ie policies — means Pakistan cannot successfully achieve and maintain vaccination goals without international vaccination supplies. For vaccine self-sufficiency to even begin, a unified stance at the federal level is required to counter vaccine hesitancy; set up reliable, internal vaccine surveillance mechanisms; secure financing for locally sustainable vaccine supplies; establish standard procedures for vaccine evaluation; and invest in research for the development of vaccines tailored to our population needs.

Published in Dawn, April 28th, 2018