Fighting to immunize the world has always been a challenging line of work, but in some cases it is becoming increasingly deadly.

As the world marks World Immunization Week humans have much to celebrate. Smallpox has been effectively eradicated from the world, and according to the World Health Organization, more children than ever are getting routine vaccinations every year. And aid workers scouring the globe have come very close to eradicating diseases like diphtheria and polio saving countless lives in the process.

But health workers are also fighting a disturbing trend of misinformation urging people to ignore the science of vaccination. The result has been fear and even violence in some rural areas and lesser developed countries where aid workers are attempting to immunize those most vulnerable, and eradicate the last holdouts of diseases like polio.

Ignorance, fear and violence

In early April a worker in Pakistan was shot outside a family home as he attempted to talk the family into vaccinating their child against polio. And late last year, two aid workers were gunned down as they were on a vaccine drive.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a doctor administering what looks to be a highly effective vaccine against Ebola was attacked and killed last week. Local health centers have become targets of violence because of rumors being spread that the Ebola crisis in the region was concocted by government officials in the capital, Kinshasa.

In the United States, some people oppose vaccinations for religious reasons, while others believe vaccines cause autism or carry debilitating chemicals, which the medical community has said is untrue.

But those who decline to have their children vaccinated are part of the reason for a resurgence of measles cases in the United States. A near-record 626 cases of easily preventable measles have been reported this year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this is the second-highest number of measles cases in the U.S. since the disease was effectively eliminated in the country in 2000.

The number of people who refuse to vaccinate their children is growing thanks to an anti-vaccine grassroots movement that shares information on social media platforms.

Rebecca Martin, director of the Center for Global Health (CGH) at the CDC, said she is seeing a rising level of mistrust between government leaders pushing for vaccinations and local populations.

“Ukraine has had an issue with immunization program since about — I want to say 2008,” Martin told VOA. “And in that period again we see that the trust between the government and the population has been questioning the value of the measles vaccine and sometimes other vaccines as well.”

She said trust is one of the most valuable elements in the fight to get vaccination programs back on track in places from Pakistan to the United States.

“… the importance of health care providers working in the community with their constituents with their mothers and fathers to make sure that they talk about the importance of vaccination is critical,” Martin said. “… and that needs to continue every day because it’s not a one time event in order to make sure that vaccines are delivered and save lives.

Information is key

Information is the other key ingredient, she said.

Health care workers need to be armed with “data and information and can be able to talk to their to the mothers and to the fathers or guardians of the children about the importance of vaccination is very critical.”

But Martin remains optimistic despite recent setbacks. She points out that polio is almost gone, “We only have wild polio virus in three countries, Nigeria Afghanistan and Pakistan” and world health workers are in what they call the final push to completely eradicate polio in the wild.

Part of the reason she is so optimistic, she said, is that the solution is so simple, “We will only end these outbreaks if we vaccinate, vaccinate and vaccinate.”
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