The concentrated global effort to use vaccination as a public health intervention began in 1974. Since then, vaccination has changed our lives. Worldwide, in the decades 2000-2020, childhood vaccination led to the reduction of deaths in children under 5 by 50% to 5.4 million deaths per year. Vaccination currently averts more than 5 million deaths each year worldwide. These are deaths that would have been caused by measles, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, diphtheria, pneumonia, rotavirus diarrhoea, and other vaccine-preventable diseases. But in recent months there have been numerous outbreaks of these diseases. Scientists from the South African Medical Research Council explain why these diseases continue to threaten children’s health in the country.
