PAHO Declares Vaccination Week for the Americas

By Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer

April 26, 2022 – Vaccination Week has officially begun in the region of the Americas spearheaded by the Pan American Health Organization The multi-national event will take place from April 23-30th and is in its 20th staging.

The history of Vaccination Week in the Americas dates to a 2002 proposal by the Ministers of Health of the Andean Region, following the last endemic measles outbreak in the Americas.

PAHO says the Americas are now facing another measles outbreak after having been declared free of this disease in 2016. Not only are there high levels of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the Caribbean but the pandemic has pushed routine vaccinations in the region back 30 years.

Assistant director of PAHO Dr. Jarvis Barbosa explained weeks ago that in only 2 years the Americas have regressed three decades as vaccination levels are now as low as they were in 1994 for measles and polio. Brazil especially has had several outbreaks of measles. The regression is due in large part to the COVID19 pandemic.

Twinned with Vaccination week will be the 11th World Immunization Week (WIW) under the call to action “Are you fully vaccinated? Get all your shots.”

This year countries and territories in the Americas plan to immunize some 140 million people ‘to accelerate vaccination against COVID-19 and closing coverage gaps against other vaccine-preventable diseases.’

PAHO Director Dr. Carissa Ettienne explained, “This Vaccination Week is an opportunity to improve vaccination rates against polio, measles, rubella, diphtheria, and other preventable diseases that have fallen in the last ten years, Vaccines work and in the last 20 years have prevented millions from getting sick, hospitalized and even dying. This is why it is vital that everyone has access,” she said.

PAHO says 806 million people have been vaccinated during annual vaccination weeks since its inception in 2002.