Research #4 - Global Strategies

The Global Vaccine Action Plan is a strategy that is recognized by over 1100 individuals that represents more than 140 countries and 290 Organizations.

strategy is planned to last for a decade, that's why 2011-2020.

It is stated that Immunization is, and should be recognized as, a core component of the human right to health and an individual, community and governmental responsibility.

To extend immunization to everyone, the GVAP seeks to ensure adequate resources, develop supportive health systems and infrastructure, and work with countries to train health workers needed to reach remote and marginalized populations.

In order to do so, GVAP has 6 guiding principles to ensure immunization of as many people as possible.

1. Country Ownership

• countries have primary ownership and responsibility for establishing good governance and for providing effective and quality immunization services for all.

2. Shared Responsibility and Partnership

• immunization against vaccine- preventable diseases is an individual, community and governmental responsibility that transcends borders and sectors.

3. Equity

• equitable access to immunization is a core component of the right to health.

4. Integration

• strong immunization systems, as part of broader health systems and closely coordinated with other primary health care delivery programmes, are essential for achieving immunization goals.

5. Sustainability

• informed decisions and implementation strategies, appropriate levels of financial investment, and improved financial management and oversight are critical to ensuring the sustainability of immunization programmes.

6. Innovation

• the full potential of immunization can only be realized through learning, continuous improvement and innovation in research and development, as well as innovation and quality improvement across all aspects of immunization.

These 6 guiding principles are used to allow the participants in the strategy to achieve a set of goals which is called "Goals of the Decade of Vaccines (2011 - 2020)

Goals of the Decade of Vaccines

1. Achieve a world free of poliomyelitis

2. Meet global and regional elimination targets

3. Meet vaccination coverage targets in every region, country and community

4. Develop and introduce new and improved vaccines and technologies

5. Exceed the Millennium Development Goal 4 target for reducing child mortality

As these goals do not have definable objectives, GVAP stated six strategic objectives that, once met will achieve the goals stated.

1. All Countries commit to immunization as a priority

• Key indicators to monitor progress towards this strategic objective at the country level are the presence of a legal framework or legislation that guarantees financing for immunization and the presence of an independent technical advisory group that meets defined criteria.

2. Individuals and Communities understand the value of vaccines and demand immunization as both their right and responsibility

• Progress towards increased under- standing and demand can be evaluated by monitoring the level of public trust in immunization, measured by surveys on knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and practices.

3. The benefits of immunization are equitably extended to all people

• Progress towards greater equity can be evaluated by monitoring the percentage of districts with less than 80% coverage with three doses of diphtheria-tetanus- pertussis-containing vaccine and coverage gaps between lowest and highest wealth quintile (or another appropriate equity indicator).

4. Strong immunization systems are an integral part of a well-functioning health system

• The strength of health systems can be evaluated based on dropout rates between the first dose of diphtheria-tetanus- pertussis-containing vaccine and the first dose of measles-containing vaccine. The quality of data is important for monitoring the functioning of a health system. Data quality can be evaluated by monitoring whether immunization coverage data is assessed as high quality by WHO and UNICEF.

5. Immunization programmes have sustainable access to predictable funding, quality supply and innovative technologies

• Key indicators to monitor progress towards this strategic objective will be the percentage of routine immunization costs financed through government budgets and globally installed capacity for production of universally recommended vaccines within five years of licensure/ potential demand.

6. Country, Regional and Global research and development innovations maximize the benefits of immunization

• Key indicators of progress towards this strategic objective include proof of concept for a vaccine that shows greater or equal to 75% efficacy for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis or malaria and the initiation of phase III trials for a first generation universal influenza vaccine. In addition, country research and development capacity can be measured by the institutional and technical capacity to manufacture vaccines and/or carry out related clinical trials and operational and organizational research.

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The document continues on to describe each objective with greater details, many of which stated interesting points, however there will be far too many content for this post. Hence, I will be selecting the more notable and important ones to take note of. I will not be stating every single objective.

Strategic Objective 2: Individuals and Communities understand the value of vaccines and demand immunization as both their right and responsibility

"Generating individual, household and community demand will require using traditional platforms more effectively as well as new strategies to convey the benefits of immunization, emphasize immunization as a core component of the right to health and encourage greater use of services."

"New efforts could take advantage of social media and approaches used by commercial and social marketing efforts to promote immunization and address concerns."

"New mobile and internet technologies should also be utilized, drawing on the experience and successes of other innovative public health campaigns."

"Communications and social research to identify the barriers to and drivers of vaccination should inform the development of context-specific messages."

These points stated are interesting as they are encouraging the use of technologies, to effectively spread knowledge of vaccinations. The knowledge will in turn increase the demand for vaccines by the populace, and encourage government to place more emphasis on the vaccination of the populace. Our idea could be developed to target this area as well.

I included the communications and social research as well. I interpreted this phrase as another area of potential focus, as it screams to me "DATA".

We currently living in the age of data, where data is everything, collection of data ensures accuracy and allow us to predict even the future as long as it does not deviate too much from the past trends. For research, data is especially important as making hypothesis and conclusions requires the backing of hard facts which are usually data driven.

Maybe one area that we can go towards would be having features that we can collect data which can be analyzed and utilized to further improve our project's effectiveness. Though it is very unlikely that we will be able to accomplish it, as we are still amateurs and lacking in a lot experience and technical skills to implement such an idea. But I feel it is still something worth looking into and may further enhance our idea potential.

Strategic Objective 3: The benefits of immunization are equitably extended to all people

It was stated that Reaching Every District (RED), a programme which was researched in the previous post, is the first step toward achieving more equitable coverage. It was able to expand the provision of immunization services. The first step was effective, however GVAP further stated that

"Even these strategies continue to miss populations, for example those that reside outside traditional social and governmental structures."

"the Reaching Every District strategic approach should be recast as “Reaching Every Community”."

There is a need to reform the already existing strategies, this reformation means that there will be change in policies and infrastructure implemented. Such an effort would need the collaborative effort of many parties involved.

If we develop our project idea towards aiding such reformation and implementation of the reformed strategy, we can make our idea more practical in real world implementation.

Strategic Objective 4: Strong immunization systems are an integral part of a well functioning health system.

"Health workers can only be effective if sufficient supplies (vaccines, supplements and medicines) are available when they need them. The influx of new vaccines has outstripped the capacity of the current cold-chain system in many countries. Thus, supply chains and waste management systems urgently need to be expanded and made more efficient and reliable."

This problem stated by RVAP is also somewhat similar to the problem stated by SAP, where Vaccine delivery and supply is one key area that we can tackle as well. Having the ability to distribute also require sufficient resource to distribute as well.

Maybe we can utilize predictive analytics which we can predict the demands of vaccines during a pandemic, that way the distribution can perhaps be based off on demand rather than just spreading the vaccine equally everywhere.

Food for thought, but seems not practical for us to implement.

Resources

Global Action Plan 2011-2020

https://www.path.org/resources/global-vaccine-action-plan-2011-2020/