The early years of a child’s life are critical, and are the basis for future health and development. In the first year of life, a child in Canada will receive an array of free vaccines to guard against preventable and infectious diseases — once the main cause of death worldwide, even in developed countries.
According to UNICEF, the world’s leading children’s humanitarian agency, “While Canadian children have access to free vaccines, other children around the world in countries like Uzbekistan do not receive these life-saving vaccines.” Many thousands of children in the country, under the age of five, die needlessly or suffer irreversible problems in their growth, as a result.
From Canada to Uzbekistan Immunization programs are vital to UNICEF’s life-saving work around the world. Along with assisting Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Health to improve its safe immunization practices, the organization has been helping the country acquire vaccines to enhance the health of Uzbekistani children.
In 2007, Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of sanofi-aventis Group, donated more than 750,000 doses of Quadracel to Health Partners International of Canada (HPIC), who provided them to UNICEF for their Uzbekistan vaccination program. UNICEF used the Quadracel vaccine to immunize children under the age of two against whooping cough, diphtheria, polio and tetanus — all potentially lifethreatening diseases.
Transporting vaccines to the developing world can be challenging, since they must remain at a specific and constant temperature to retain their effectiveness. Sanofi Pasteur has worked hard to develop a system that ensures the vaccines remain as potent when they travel across the globe, as they are when they leave their manufacturing facilities. Immunization saves more than 3 million lives worldwide each year, and it saves millions more from suffering illness and lifelong disability (WHO estimate). Sanofi Pasteur is the largest company in the world solely devoted to human vaccines. Since 1991, the company has partnered with HPIC to safeguard people in the developing world from preventable and potentially life-threatening diseases. In total they have donated $48 million worth of vaccines to HPIC, for immunization programs around the world.
“We are proud of our long history of contributing to HPIC and Sanofi Pasteur remains committed to donating vaccines to help the most underprivileged populations in the world,” said Mark Lievonen, President of Sanofi Pasteur Limited. “Developing innovative vaccines that help prevent and even conquer lifethreatening diseases is part of our social responsibility. We are working hard to make vaccines accessible for public health on an equitable basis worldwide.”
