Vaccines bring us closer
With all eyes on vaccines, World Immunization Week 2021 offers an unprecedented opportunity to build public trust in the value of all vaccines and help build long-term support for immunization.
Celebrated every year 24-30 April, World Immunization Week aims to promote the use of vaccines to protect people of all ages against disease. Using the theme ‘Vaccines bring us closer’, this year’s campaign will show how vaccination connects us to the people, goals and moments that matter to us most, helping improve the health of everyone, everywhere throughout life.
Immunization saves millions of lives every year and is widely recognized as one of the world’s most successful health interventions. However, nearly 20 million children are still unvaccinated and under-vaccinated worldwide, with 1.7 million living in the Western Pacific Region.
While the world focuses on critically important new vaccines to protect against COVID-19 and maintaining other preventive measures, there remains a need to ensure routine vaccinations are not missed. Many children have not been vaccinated during the global pandemic, leaving them at risk of serious diseases like measles and polio. Rapidly circulating misinformation around the topic of vaccination adds to this threat.
This year's campaign aims to:
- Reframe the global vaccine conversation to focus on the importance of vaccines
- Highlight the many ways in which vaccines enable us to live healthy, productive lives by preventing the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases
- Demonstrate social proof that the broader public already values and trust vaccines
- This year’s campaign looks to build solidarity and trust in vaccination as a public good that saves lives and protects health. To this end, we will be seeking more partners to join us, bringing people together in support of a lifesaving cause.
Global World Immunization Week page