Vaccines Saved at Least 154 Million Lives in 50 Years, Says WHO

 World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaks during an event about expanding health coverage for all during the IMF and World Bank’s 2024 annual Spring Meetings in Washington, US, April 18, 2024. (Reuters)
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaks during an event about expanding health coverage for all during the IMF and World Bank’s 2024 annual Spring Meetings in Washington, US, April 18, 2024. (Reuters)
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Vaccines Saved at Least 154 Million Lives in 50 Years, Says WHO

 World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaks during an event about expanding health coverage for all during the IMF and World Bank’s 2024 annual Spring Meetings in Washington, US, April 18, 2024. (Reuters)
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaks during an event about expanding health coverage for all during the IMF and World Bank’s 2024 annual Spring Meetings in Washington, US, April 18, 2024. (Reuters)

Global immunization efforts have saved at least 154 million lives in the past 50 years, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, adding that most of those to benefit were infants.

That is the equivalent of six lives saved every minute of every year of the half century, the UN health agency said.

In a study published in the Lancet, WHO gave a comprehensive analysis of the impact of 14 vaccines used under the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI), which celebrates its 50th anniversary next month.

Thanks to these vaccines, "a child born today is 40 percent more likely to see their fifth birthday than a child born 50 years ago", WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.

"Vaccines are among the most powerful inventions in history, making once-feared diseases preventable," he said.

"Smallpox has been eradicated, polio is on the brink, and with the more recent development of vaccines against diseases like malaria and cervical cancer, we are pushing back the frontiers of disease."

Infants accounted for 101 million of the lives saved through immunization over the five decades, said the study.

"Immunization was the single greatest contribution of any health intervention to ensuring babies not only see their first birthdays but continue leading healthy lives into adulthood," WHO said.

'Vaccines cause adults'

Over 50 years, vaccines against 14 diseases -- diphtheria, Haemophilus influenza type B, hepatitis B, Japanese encephalitis, measles, meningitis A, pertussis, invasive pneumococcal disease, polio, rotavirus, rubella, tetanus, tuberculosis, and yellow fever -- had directly contributed to reducing infant deaths by 40 percent, the study found.

For Africa, the reduction in infant mortality was more than 50 percent, it said.

The vaccine against measles -- a highly contagious disease by a virus that attacks mainly children -- had the most significant impact.

That jab accounted for 60 percent of the lives saved due to immunization, according to the study.

The polio vaccine means that more than 20 million people are able to walk today who would otherwise have been paralyzed.

The study also showed that when a vaccine saves a child's life, that person goes on to live an average of 66 years of full health on average -- with a total of 10.2 billion full health years gained over the five decades.

"Vaccines cause adults," Tedros said.

WHO stressed that the gains in childhood survival showed the importance of protecting progress on immunization.

It highlighted accelerating efforts to reach 67 million children who missed at least one vaccination during the Covid pandemic.

The UN health agency, along with the UN children's agency Unicef, the Gavi vaccine alliance and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, on Wednesday launched a joint campaign called "Humanly Possible".

It is aimed at scaling up vaccination programs around the world.

"By working together we can save millions more lives, advance equity and create a much healthier and more prosperous world," Violaine Michell of the Gates Foundation told journalists.

Anti-vax threat

But efforts to ensure broader vaccine coverage have increasingly run into anti-vax movements and conspiracy theories circulating on social media.

This was particularly clear during the Covid pandemic, but it has also taken its toll on efforts to avert measles outbreaks.

"There has been a very significant backsliding in the use of the measles vaccine and the coverage that has been achieved in countries around the world, and that is resulting in outbreaks," WHO vaccine chief Kate O'Brien told journalists.

In 2022, the last year for which there are clear statistics, more than nine million measles cases were registered around the world, including 136,000 children who died.

Lack of access to the vaccines was a major concern, said O'Brien, but part of the backsliding was attributable to "misinformation and anti-vax movements".

"The measles vaccine is a safe vaccine, and it's highly effective," she insisted, stressing the need to ramp up efforts against "one of the most infectious viruses that infect humans".



‘More and Faster’: UN Calls to Shrink Buildings’ Carbon Footprint

 Snow capped mountains are seen behind the downtown Los Angeles skyline, California, US, March 7, 2025. (Reuters)
Snow capped mountains are seen behind the downtown Los Angeles skyline, California, US, March 7, 2025. (Reuters)
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‘More and Faster’: UN Calls to Shrink Buildings’ Carbon Footprint

 Snow capped mountains are seen behind the downtown Los Angeles skyline, California, US, March 7, 2025. (Reuters)
Snow capped mountains are seen behind the downtown Los Angeles skyline, California, US, March 7, 2025. (Reuters)

Countries must move rapidly to slash CO2 emissions from homes, offices, shops and other buildings -- a sector that accounts for a third of global greenhouse gas pollution, the United Nations said Monday.

Carbon dioxide emissions from the building sector rose around five percent in the last decade when they should have fallen 28 percent, according to a new report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

It said emissions had plateaued since 2023 as climate policies began to have an impact, particularly green building standards, the use of renewable energy and electrified heating and cooling.

But the building sector still consumes 32 percent of the world's energy and contributes 34 percent of CO2 emissions, the report found.

"The buildings where we work, shop and live account for a third of global emissions and a third of global waste," said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP.

"The good news is that government actions are working. But we must do more and do it faster."

She called on nations to include targets to "rapidly cut emissions from buildings and construction" in their climate plans.

The report said that while most of the countries that signed up to the 2015 Paris climate deal -- nearly 200 have signed -- mention the sector, so far only 19 countries have sufficiently detailed goals in their national carbon cutting plans.

The report said that as of 2023, important metrics like energy-related emissions and the adoption of renewable energy "remain well below required progress rates".

That means that countries, businesses and homeowners now need to dramatically pick up the pace to meet the 2030 emissions reduction targets.

- 'Critical challenge' -

Direct and indirect CO2 emissions will now need to fall more than 10 percent per year, more than double the originally envisaged pace.

The rollout of renewables is a similar story.

The share of renewables like solar and wind in final energy consumption rose by only 4.5 percentage points since 2015, well behind the goal of nearly 18 percentage points.

That now needs to accelerate by a factor of seven to meet this decade's goal of tripling renewable energy use worldwide, UNEP said.

The report urged countries to accelerate the roll-out of renewable technologies and increase the share of renewables in the final energy mix to 46 percent by 2030 -- a rise of around 18 percent.

It also called on policymakers to increase energy efficiency retrofits to include better design, insulation and the use of renewables and heat pumps.

More work also needs to be done to improve the sustainability of materials like steel and cement, whose manufacture accounts for nearly a fifth of all emissions from the building sector.

But the report did say that circular construction practices were increasing in some areas, with recycled materials accounting for 18 percent of construction inputs in Europe.

The authors urged all major greenhouse gas emitters to take action by introducing zero-carbon building energy codes by 2028, and called on other countries to create and tighten their regulations within the next 10 years.

The report highlighted positive national policies from China, France, Germany, Mexico and South Africa among others.

But it said financing remained a "critical challenge".

In 2023, it found that global investment in energy efficiency in buildings fell seven percent from a year earlier to $270 billion, driven by higher borrowing costs and the winding back of government support programs, notably in Europe.

Those investments now need to double -- to $522 billion -- by 2030, it said.