World Health Organization Highlights "Vaccine Hesitancy" Movement as a Top Global Threat to Public Health

This month, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a new list of top global health threats that included the anti-vaccine movement alongside pandemic flu and ebola. Vaccine hesistancy, which is defined as delays or refusal of available vaccines, threatens to reverse progress against infectious disease. The anti-vaccine movement likely contributed 30% increase in cases of measles globally and a resurgence in countries where the disease had previously been close to elimination. The WHO names vaccines as "one of the most cost-effective ways of avoiding disease", preventing 2-3 million deaths a year. The use of vaccines has been integral in the eradication of polio and HPV, two deadly diseases,

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, indicates that the inclusion of vaccine hesistancy is important to highlight the threat it poses to public health, arguing that it "threatens to undo" much of the progress made by public vaccination programs. While parents may underestimate the threat of diseases and want to spread out or avoid vaccinations, such disruptions in vaccination schedules may put children at risk of disease. Dr. Adalja emphasizes the importance of physicians determining the cause of their patient's hesistancy and attempting to address it reasonably.

For more, see: https://www.livescience.com/64523-anti-vaccine-movement-top-global-threats-who.html. For the list itself, see: https://www.who.int/emergencies/ten-threats-to-global-health-in-2019

-Ed