Issue 03 of our print magazine is available to buy now

Issue 03 is available to buy now

The Edit: World Immunisation Week
The Edit

The Edit: World Immunisation Week

This week, we reflect on how vaccines bring us closer and consider what new challenges immunisation programmes face today.
black and white crowd

World Immunisation Week provides a chance to reflect on how vaccinations can bring us closer together and improve global health. After a year that has starkly demonstrated how individual health is connected to global health, the world needs coordinated and inclusive immunisation more than ever. 

With the rise of misinformation and fake news, what challenges do immunisation programmes face today? With vaccination efforts more relevant and critical now than they have been for a century, what lessons can we learn from the history of immunisation? 

This is our weekly edit of the global conversation on purpose. 

And finally, some words from Lady Mary Montagu. She first introduced the concept of inoculation into England after having her son variolated in Constantinople in 1717. Her decision directly paved the way to Edward Jenner’s first cowpox vaccine in 1796, the birth of modern immunology and the prevention of countless deaths.

From A Letter to a Friend, 1717: “The small-pox, so fatal, and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless … I am patriot enough to take pains to bring this useful invention into fashion in England.”