16/12/2024

Vaccination ranks second only to clean water as the most effective public health intervention to prevent disease, and immunisations have saved more lives and prevented more serious diseases than any advance in recent medical history.^1,2

With vaccination rates declining in the UK, the NHS has developed a Long-Term Plan to focus on prevention programmes.^3,4 This, together with the NHS Vaccination Strategy, aims to deliver improved access to immunisations across the country to enable more people and more communities to have the opportunity to help protect themselves against vaccine-preventable diseases.⁵

This article explores the importance of healthcare prevention and the role of immunisation, highlighting why a focus on prevention is needed to not only help us live longer and healthier lives but also protect our NHS by reducing pressures on services and making best use of available resources.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that vaccination prevents between 3.5 - 5 million deaths across the world annually from diseases including diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, flu and measles.⁶ Vaccines are now available to help prevent more than 20 life-threatening diseases, supporting people of all ages to live well for longer.⁶ The world is changing.  We have an increasing ageing population and are more connected than ever; meaning that infectious disease can be transported from a remote village anywhere in the world to any major city or continent in as little as 36 hours.^7,8 This makes healthcare prevention more important than ever and the WHO highlights the critical role vaccines play in the prevention and control of disease outbreaks, supporting global health security and as a vital tool in the battle against antimicrobial resistance.⁶

The positive impact of vaccination is clearly demonstrated by smallpox, which was one of the most feared diseases for over 3,000 years, killing hundreds of millions of people worldwide.⁹ Smallpox, a highly contagious infectious disease, caused a high fever and progressive skin rash that left permanent scars over large parts of the body and led to blindness in some people.¹⁰ Thanks to a WHO collaborative global vaccination programme, smallpox was eradicated in 1979.⁹

Vaccines can be an effective way of protecting against harmful diseases before you come into contact with them by using your body’s natural defences – your immune system - to help build resistance and protection.⁶ Once your immune system knows how to fight a disease through vaccination, it can often provide protection for many years; helping protect populations at the most vulnerable points of their lives. If enough people in the population are vaccinated, it is harder for disease to spread.¹¹ Vaccines not only help protect your health but are also a critical component of healthy ageing.¹² Research has found that immunisations cut the risk of hospitalisation from flu by a quarter in adults aged 65 years and older, a third for other adults and two-thirds for children.¹³ To support healthy ageing, the benefits are not only short-term but long term too, given that for those over the age of 65 even as little as ten days of bed rest can lead to substantial muscle loss, equivalent to ten years of life.¹⁴

The UK’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout is rightly held up as a success and shows what can be achieved with a mission-based attitude from Government to make it as easy as possible for everyone to access vaccines if they wish to.¹⁵ Despite this success, uptake of routine immunisations has been steadily declining in the UK.⁴ The situation across the world is similar with the WHO listing vaccine hesitancy as one of the largest threats to global health in 2019.¹⁶ In April 2020, the UN estimated that vaccination programmes in 24 countries had been delayed due to COVID-19, resulting in a difficult balancing act between dealing with the pandemic and maintaining routine immunisation levels against vaccine-preventable diseases.¹⁷ Whilst there have been improvements, the WHO highlights that vaccination levels for children are still not back to pre-pandemic 2019 levels.¹⁸

The UK’s routine immunisation schedule provides protection against at least 15 vaccine preventable diseases to people throughout life, from eight weeks to 70 years of age and beyond, with other vaccines available to special groups or in certain areas of the country.¹⁹ Recent NHS data shows that immunisation rates have been steadily declining in recent years and vaccine coverage fell in 12 out of 14 routine programmes for children up to five years old in 2022-23, including whooping cough, polio, meningitis and diphtheria.²⁰ As a result, England no longer meets the WHO minimum level of 95 per cent of the population being immunised to prevent outbreaks.²⁰

Additionally, in 2022, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published data indicating only 90% of children in the UK were vaccinated against measles.²¹ This placed the UK in 32nd place out of 38 OECD member countries and amongst 20 other countries whose measles immunisation rate fell below 95%. Hungary had the highest rate (100%) with Poland having the lowest rate of 71%.²¹ This drop has resulted in the UK losing its ‘measles free’ status in 2023.²² With the UK no longer being a ‘measles free’ country and statistics showing a decline in the MMR vaccine over the past decade, the country needs to act now to help reverse these downward trends and help prevent unnecessary deaths and hospitalisations from vaccine-preventable diseases.²⁰

In the 2023 House of Commons report ‘Prevention in health and social care: vaccinations’, it states the need for more flexibility around the delivery of vaccines, questioning whether a broader group and not just healthcare professionals should be able to administer vaccinations to facilitate easier and greater accessibility.¹⁵ The NHS Vaccination Strategy also makes tackling health inequities in vaccination a priority.⁵  Those on low pay or zero-hour contracts may find it harder to access vaccination locations and struggle to get time off work to make their appointments.¹⁵ We encourage organisations to help their employees access vaccinations through initiatives such as mobile treatment centres or paid time off work to help themselves, their families or those they care for, get the immunisations they need. It is important to ensure that individuals are able to take advantage of the important protection that vaccination offers and are not hampered by the practical challenges of time and location.

The societal value of immunisation needs to be better understood. Routine vaccinations have been given to generations of children, helping to effectively prevent serious childhood illnesses. As we saw with COVID-19, increased global travel enables diseases to spread quickly affecting people from many countries and cultures.⁸ Highlighting the important role vaccines play in disease prevention and educating on how they work is more important now than ever.  Vaccination programmes help:

• Protect the young and vulnerable⁴

• Protect those over 65 years of age from becoming seriously ill and supporting them to live healthier for longer⁷

• Prevent loss of productivity through illness and absence from work⁷

• Protect the NHS by reducing illness severity and likelihood of hospitalisation⁷

It is encouraging to see that prevention is an NHS priority. The UK’s world-leading COVID-19 vaccination programme allowed the nation to have a transformative approach and engage with communities in a way never done before.⁵ This approach needs to continue for all routine immunisation programmes. We need to help people understand the value of immunisation in prevention and facilitate uptake by taking the learnings from COVID-19 and removing barriers to access where possible.

At Pfizer, we’re committed to helping the NHS achieve this ‘prevention-focused’ ambition to help improve population health, prevent further illnesses developing and continuing to help individuals get access to breakthroughs that change lives.