Encyclopedia > Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization
The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization is an alliance between various UN organizations, national governments, private foundations, NGOs and the pharmaceutical industry. Its objective is to increase rates of immunization. In some respects, it can be considered a public-private partnership. This article is about the United Nations, for other uses of UN see UN (disambiguation) Official languages English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Arabic Secretary-General Kofi Annan (since 1997) Established October 24, 1945 Member states 191 Headquarters New York City, NY, USA Official site http://www. ... A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an organization that is not part of a government and was not founded by states. ... This is a list of pharmaceutical and biotech companies that are major manufacturers on global or national markets : Abbott Laboratories Able Laboratories Akzo Nobel Allergan Almirall Prodesfarma Alphapharm Altana (previously Byk Gulden) ALZA, part of Johnson & Johnson Amgen AstraZeneca, formed from the merger of Astra AB and Zeneca Group PLC... Immunization (AmE) or Immunisation (BE) has a number of meanings: In medicine immunization is the process by which an individual is exposed to a material that is designed to prime his or her immune system against that material. ... Public-private partnership (PPP) is a variation of privatization in which elements of a service previously run solely by the public sector are provided through a partnership between the government and one or more private sector companies. ...
Vaccination (Latin: vacca—cow) is so named because the first vaccine was derived from a virus affecting cows: the cowpox virus, a relatively benign virus that provides a degree of immunity to smallpox, a contagious and deadly disease.
Vaccinations involve the administration of one or more immunogens, in the form of live, but weakened (attenuated) infectious agents, which normally are either weaker, but closely-related species (as with smallpox and cowpox), or strains weakened by some process.
Vaccination campaigns are generally accepted as having contributed to the worldwide elimination of smallpox, through herd immunity, and to the restriction of polio to isolated pockets in countries where healthcare access is difficult.
Globalimmunization of children is an elusive goal of public health officials world-wide.
New vaccines of great power were coming through the research and development pipeline and had been introduced or were about to be introduced into the immunization programs of industrialized countries, but there appeared to be no prospect of these becoming available as part of EPI.
In cases of technology transfer to vaccine manufacturers in developing countries, they would like their intellectual property rights to be respected and to have, therefore, normal joint venture and licensing processes observed.