African Vaccination Week

Vaccines prevent more than 2.5 million deaths each year. Africa Vaccination Week, celebrated each year in the last week of April, aims to promote the use of vaccines to protect all Africans against disease. Vaccines are one of the greatest scientific innovations of all time. In the past 60 years, vaccines helped eradicate one disease (smallpox) and are close to eradicating another (polio). Vaccines helped reduce measles deaths globally by 78% between 2000 and 2008. In sub-Saharan Africa, deaths dropped by 92% in the same period.