Campaigning Against Infectious Disease

Vaccination ranks as the single most important public health achievement of the 20th century.  In the industrialized world, diphtheria, measles, and whooping cough – once causes of great fear, suffering, and death – are, for the most part, rare occurrences that minimally impact families and communities. Other scourges of the past, killers of millions, have largely been eliminated through polio and smallpox vaccines.

But in the developing world, some 1.4 million children still die each year of vaccine-preventable diseases. Where they live, medical care is extremely limited. Getting booster shots at periodic intervals means traveling great distances, often on foot. For these reasons and many more, vaccination coverage around the world is strikingly deficient.

But new funding and energy is being directed to close this immunization gap. Burness has campaigned on behalf of immunization, starting with our work in the early 1990s with the Children's Vaccine Program. Today, in our work with the communications office of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) and the Vaccine Fund, we continue to deliver a message of both need and hope with international placement of opinion articles and other media outreach.

With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and from countries around the world, GAVI is seeking to increase immunization rates and reverse widening global disparities in access to vaccines. The International Finance Facility for Immunization (IFFIm) has already infused $2 billion in new funds over the next ten years to immunization through GAVI, with the backing of the governments of France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Norway – with an additional $2 billion on the way.

A pioneer in improving vaccination for children, Seattle-based PATH is also at the forefront of developing new vaccines for rotavirus (a diarrheal disease) and malaria, as well as using new technologies to improve vaccination. Burness has provided a range of services to PATH's vaccine programs, including strategic communications counsel, writing services for Web sites and scientific proceedings, media relations, message development, and media training.

We may find 100 years from now that advances in vaccination will transform the 21st century as well. Time will tell. But for now, it is an enormous privilege to have a supporting role alongside scientists who offer the world's children a healthy start in life, and, with it, so much promise for the future.