By Amina Abdul Salam Due to the importance of vaccination and under the slogan "Protection together #vaccines work", the World Health Organisation (WHO) has devoted one week each year to "World Immunisation Week", to be held between April 24 and 30. The World Immunisation Week is aimed at establishing the measures that need to be taken to ensure that everybody can avoid the disease through vaccination. Dr Mohamed Tag el-Din, Professor of Chest Diseases at Ain Shams University, former minister of health and President of the Egyptian Society of Chest Diseases and Tuberculosis, explained that vaccines were essential in preventing disease, especially infectious and deadly disease. Immunisation has revolutionised disease prevention and has saved many countries from serious epidemics. Diphtheria vaccine has almost eliminated this dangerous disease from most of the world. The story of Egypt's success in 2005 in eradicating poliomyelitis, which caused many deaths and disabilities, was a unique success story that was studied around the world. The vaccination teams moved from house to house and from district to district, throughout Egypt. There is no doubt that the system of compulsory vaccination in Egypt, in the past and at present, has been successful in preventing many infectious diseases such as measles, whooping cough, smallpox, polio, tuberculosis and other diseases. "The flu and pneumonia vaccines, administered to selected groups of patients and healthy people or to pilgrims, have been successful in reducing these diseases and their spread and in avoiding their complications," said Dr Tag el-Din. Dr Adel Rhyiad, Professor of Pediatrics at Benha University, noted that vaccination was one of the greatest achievements of science and there were diseases that had disappeared from the world such as smallpox, thanks to vaccination. He said that polio would also disappear soon, in 2022, as planned by WHO. At present, there are many diseases that have become rare due to the mandatory vaccinations made available by the Ministry of Health to all the children of Egypt. "The death rate and the complications of disease have decreased due to the use of vaccination. This has been noted by all the paediatricians of Egypt in recent years. Therefore, we recommend vaccinating all Egyptian children with all the available vaccines in order to preserve their health as they are the future of Egypt," Dr Rhyiad said. When it comes to the influenza vaccine, it is universally recommended that the vaccination coverage be extended to 75-90 per cent of all those who are at high risk (including older people and people with chronic diseases). Dr Hisham Tarraf, Professor of Internal Medicine and Allergy at Cairo University, pointed out that the WHO was focusing on fighting infectious diseases, which can be prevented through the use of vaccines. One of the most serious diseases is seasonal flu which spreads easily from person to person and is caused by an influenza virus. Seasonal flu is common all over the world. Annual influenza pandemics can infect and affect all population groups, but the most vulnerable groups are pregnant women, children aged six months, elderly people, patients with chronic diseases affecting the lungs, the heart and the kidneys, diabetics, people with immunodeficiency diseases and healthcare workers.
