National Infant Immunization Week

National Infant Immunization Week

This week is National Infant Immunization Week in the U.S. and it was recently observed in Bangladesh as well. Afia, our local health worker in West Rajguru, Bangladesh did a blog post about her role as a health worker during an immunization day. Her main objective was giving the oral polio vaccine to children under 5, as well as taking the opportunity to counsel families on other health issues. Children also received other vaccines that required injections from a doctor who travels to different villages just for vaccination days. She identified the children who had colds, counted their breaths and found 2 who were suffering with pneumonia.
“I counseled the mothers on how to prevent colds from turning to pneumonia, and advised them on what to do if children do get pneumonia. Many people in the village still do not understand the difference between pneumonia and severe pneumonia. This worries me because if they do not understand how pneumonia works, and do not take precautions, regular pneumonia can easily turn into severe pneumonia, which is fatal!”

Most American parents vaccinate their children and this has dramatically reduced infections and deaths due to vaccine-preventable illnesses, though there are periodic outbreaks in pockets that don’t immunize their children. We are lucky enough to live in a country where new, effective vaccines are quickly added to the vaccination schedule so most American children already receive the pneumococcal vaccine that protects against a key cause of childhood pneumonia. However, these newer vaccines are not yet purchased by governments in developing countries to protect their children, and thus, kids suffer from diseases that are often preventable.

Immunizations are a cost effective approach that saves lives and prevents illness but it’s critical that more funding from donor and developing countries be target to reaching the children who are not yet protected with vaccines.

Our local health workers promote vaccination days, but they also treat children with illnesses when they occur. For example, while researchers are working on it, there is not a vaccine for malaria which accounts for 781,000 deaths a year and 85% of those are children under 5. World Malaria Day is Monday April 25th and we are joining with other organizations in the fight against malaria by educating the public that malaria is preventable and treatable. To find out what our health workers are doing to change this and what you can do to

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