introduced into the national programmes of low -and middle-income countries with associated reductions in morbidity and mortality. Still, national governments, development partners and international agencies
must invest more to meet the Decade of Vaccines’ goals of disease eradication or elimination and to reduce mortality and morbidity from vaccine-preventable diseases. However, the report also notes that :
- As the world nears the final stages of the polio eradication effort, the challenges to achieve success have increased. It is imperative that all stakeholders now redouble their efforts to complete the job, as failure would represent a failure not only for the immunization community but for public health
- All countries are urged to establish national action plans to introduce at least one dose of inactivated poliovirus vaccine and switch from the use of trivalent oral polio vaccine to bivalent oral polio vaccine
- Measles and rubella/congenital rubella syndrome elimination, while long accomplished in the Region of the Americas, is a new challenge for other regions. Currently, in addition to the Region of the Americas, only the Western Pacific Region is on track for reaching the regional measles elimination target; the African, European and Eastern Mediterranean regions are not on track and the South - East Asia Region has only just established an elimination goal and target year..