Advocating for efforts to protect African children, families, and communities from the threat of infectious diseases: report of the First International African Vaccinology Conference

Abstract

One means of improving healthcare workers’ knowledge of and attitudes to vaccines is through running vaccine conferences which are accessible, affordable, and relevant to their everyday work. Various vaccinology conferences are held each year worldwide. These meetings focus heavily on basic science with much discussion about new developments in vaccines, and relatively little coverage of policy, advocacy, and communication issues. A negligible proportion of delegates at these conferences come from Africa, home to almost 40% of the global burden of vaccine-preventable diseases. To the best of our knowledge, no major vaccinology conference has ever been held on the African continent apart from World Health Organization (WHO) meetings. The content of the first International African Vaccinology Conference was planned to be different; to focus on the science, with a major part of discussions being on clinical, programmatic, policy, and advocacy issues. The conference was held in Cape Town, South Africa, from 8 to 11 November 2012. The theme of the conference was “Advocating for efforts to protect African children, families, and communities from the threat of infectious diseases”. There were more than 550 registered participants from 55 countries (including 37 African countries). There were nine pre-conference workshops, ten plenary sessions, and 150 oral and poster presentations. The conference discussed the challenges to universal immunisation in Africa as well as the promotion of dialogue and communication on immunisation among all stakeholders. There was general acknowledgment that giant strides have been made in Africa since the global launch of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation in 1974. For example, there has been significant progress in introducing new and under-utilised vaccines; including hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenza type b, pneumococcal conjugate, rotavirus, meningococcal A conjugate, and human papillomavirus vaccines. In May 2012, African countries endorsed the Global Vaccine Action Plan at the World Health Assembly. However, more than six million children remain incompletely vaccinated in Africa leading to more than one million vaccine-preventable deaths annually. In addition, there are persistent problems with leadership and planning, vaccine stock management, supply chain capacity and quality, provider-parent communication, and financial sustainability. The conference delegates agreed to move from talking to taking concrete actions around children's health, and to ensure that African governments commit to saving children's lives. They would advocate for lower costs of immunisation programmes in Africa, perhaps through bulk buying and improved administration of vaccine rollout through the New Partnership for Africa's Development.

Expanding the reach of vaccinology training in Africa: leveraging the success of the Annual African Vaccinology Course

“…Cohorts who attended from 2005 to 2010 were excluded because many of their contact details were outdated. The 2012 cohort was excluded because the 2012 AAVC was held back-to-back with the First International African Vaccinology Conference with some participants attending both events ( 7 ). A Google form survey consisting of 8 closed-ended and 2 open-ended questions ( Supplementary File S1 ) was devised to ascertain the vaccinology refresher training needs of AAVC alumni.…”

Emerging and Neglected Infectious Diseases: Insights, Advances, and Challenges

“…A reasonable public health response towards addressing infectious disease problem in general therefore aims at addressing the fundamental factors that promote the occurrence and persistence of these diseases, while embarking on appropriate control measures. WHO therefore supports advocacy and awareness and pathogenesis studies and development and deployment of diagnostic tools and therapeutic drugs and vaccines as the pillars of public health response [ 72 – 74 ].…”