The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) is call­ing for ur­gent ac­tion to ad­dress gaps in im­mu­niza­tion cov­er­age as coun­tries in the Amer­i­c­as, in­clud­ing the Caribbean, con­front out­breaks of vac­cine-pre­ventable dis­eases such as measles and yel­low fever.

“Over the past five decades, vac­cines have saved 154 mil­lion lives world­wide, re­duc­ing child mor­tal­i­ty by 41 per­cent in the Amer­i­c­as alone,” said PA­HO di­rec­tor, Dr. Jar­bas Bar­bosa, ahead of Vac­ci­na­tion Week in the Amer­i­c­as from April 26 to May 3, 2025.

But he has warned: “Our progress against vac­cine-pre­ventable dis­eases needs a strong and last­ing com­mit­ment to im­ple­ment the ap­pro­pri­ate pub­lic health mea­sures”.

PA­HO said world­wide, con­firmed measles cas­es ex­ceed­ed 359,000 last year.  Com­bined with gaps in vac­ci­na­tion cov­er­age, this has led to lo­cal­ized out­breaks across six coun­tries in the Amer­i­c­as, with 2,313 re­port­ed cas­es so far this year, up from just 215 dur­ing the same pe­ri­od in 2024.

“Measles is one of the most con­ta­gious dis­eases in the world. Yet coun­tries have strug­gled to sus­tain the rec­om­mend­ed 95 per cent cov­er­age of MMR (measles, mumps, and rubel­la) vac­cine, which leaves us sus­cep­ti­ble to im­port­ed cas­es,” the PA­HO di­rec­tor said.

But PA­HO not­ed that progress has been made in re­cent years. For the first time since 2019, MMR1 cov­er­age in­creased in 2023, reach­ing 87 per cent across the Amer­i­c­as. De­spite this im­prove­ment, there re­mains a sig­nif­i­cant gap: 1.4 mil­lion chil­dren in the Re­gion did not re­ceive any dose of the MMR vac­cine that year.

Out­breaks have been ob­served in com­mu­ni­ties where just three to sev­en per cent of in­di­vid­u­als were sus­cep­ti­ble, high­light­ing the risk posed by even small pock­ets of low cov­er­age.

Dur­ing this year’s Vac­ci­na­tion Week in the Amer­i­c­as coun­tries across the re­gion plan to ad­min­is­ter an es­ti­mat­ed 66.5 mil­lion dos­es of vac­cines, in­clud­ing 2.7 mil­lion tar­get­ing measles.

Now in its 23rd year, Vac­ci­na­tion Week—a flag­ship ini­tia­tive led by PA­HO—has so far en­abled over 1.2 bil­lion peo­ple to be vac­ci­nat­ed since its launch in 2003.

Un­der the slo­gan “Your de­ci­sion makes the dif­fer­ence. Im­mu­niza­tion for all”, coun­tries are mo­bi­liz­ing to reach those at high­est risk of miss­ing vac­cines, es­pe­cial­ly chil­dren.

In 2025, the re­gion al­so has seen an uptick in yel­low fever, with four coun­tries re­port­ing 189 cas­es so far, in­clud­ing 74 deaths, com­pared to 61 cas­es and 30 deaths re­port­ed dur­ing 2024.

To ad­dress these out­breaks, PA­HO is work­ing with coun­tries to tack­le vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy, strength­en rou­tine im­mu­niza­tion pro­grammes, and ex­pand ac­cess to vac­ci­na­tion through the use of mi­croplan­ning and dig­i­tal tools such as elec­tron­ic im­mu­niza­tion reg­istries and ge­o­graph­ic in­for­ma­tion sys­tems.

“These tools help mon­i­tor cov­er­age, iden­ti­fy gaps, stop the virus in its tracks,” Dr. Bar­bosa said, high­light­ing the im­por­tance of the PA­HO Re­volv­ing Fund—a pooled pro­cure­ment mech­a­nism that al­lows coun­tries in the Amer­i­c­as to ac­cess high-qual­i­ty vac­cines at af­ford­able prices.

“With­out the Fund, coun­tries would pay at least 75 per cent more for the re­gion’s 13 most com­mon vac­cines,” he said.

Dr. Bar­bosa said that while Vac­ci­na­tion Week in the Amer­i­c­as “re­mains a cor­ner­stone of pub­lic health in the re­gion, im­mu­niza­tion does not end with Vac­ci­na­tion Week.”

The Amer­i­c­as has a lega­cy of lead­er­ship in vac­ci­na­tion and dis­ease elim­i­na­tion. The re­gion was the first to elim­i­nate small­pox in 1974 and po­lio in 1994, and has al­so elim­i­nat­ed measles, rubel­la, con­gen­i­tal rubel­la syn­drome, ma­ter­nal and neona­tal tetanus, and out­breaks of ur­ban yel­low fever.

Now, PA­HO is sup­port­ing coun­tries through its Dis­ease Elim­i­na­tion Ini­tia­tive, a bold ef­fort to elim­i­nate more than 30 dis­eases and re­lat­ed con­di­tions by 2030, 11 of which are vac­cine pre­ventable.

In 2024, the re­gion suc­cess­ful­ly re­gained its sta­tus as free of en­dem­ic measles. While this sta­tus re­mains in­tact, re­cent out­breaks serve as a re­minder of the on­go­ing risk and the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing high vac­ci­na­tion cov­er­age to pre­vent the reestab­lish­ment of en­dem­ic trans­mis­sion.

“The Re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as is ours to pro­tect. By work­ing to­geth­er, through­out vac­ci­na­tion week and be­yond, we can build a stronger, safer, and health­i­er Amer­i­c­as,” the PA­HO Di­rec­tor said.

PA­HO said that the theme for Vac­ci­na­tion Week this year, “Your de­ci­sion makes a dif­fer­ence. Im­mu­niza­tion for all”, high­lights the ur­gent need to pre­vent the spread of life-threat­en­ing dis­eases and keep each one of us, our fam­i­lies, and our com­mu­ni­ties, safe. —WASH­ING­TON (CMC)