Vaccines prevent disease, save lives and produce social and economic benefits.
Vaccinations are one of our greatest public health successes to date, averting 2-3 million child deaths every year.
They are one of the most cost-effective and evidence-based medical interventions available, responsible for a huge reduction in the global burden of infectious diseases.
Vaccines also bring social and economic benefits for individuals and society, such as:
- Saving medical treatment costs
- Averting losses in income or productivity
Experts estimate that every $1 invested in expanding immunisation
returns $60 in social, economic and environmental benefits.
Yet routine vaccines still do not reach everyone.
Globally, one child dies every minute from a vaccine-preventable disease. This is because 19 million children fail to receive their basic vaccinations before their first birthday each year. At Suvita, we believe that this is unacceptable.
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Vaccination coverage varies widely between and within countries, so certain regions bear a much greater load than others when it comes to vaccine-preventable diseases. Half of the world’s undervaccinated children are in India. The country suffers the death of one child every four minutes as a result. This is particularly shocking given India’s early contributions to vaccine research and development and its current position as a leading global producer of vaccines.
Our approach
Suvita implements a rigorously tested solution which increases demand for vaccinations in India by appointing carefully selected volunteer immunisation ambassadors, who share information with new parents within their community about local vaccine clinics.
1
Survey members of a community to identify opinion leaders
2
Invite opinion leaders to volunteer as immunisation ambassadors
3
Keep ambassadors updated regularly with details of local monthly immunisation clinics by SMS and phone calls
4
Ambassadors share this information with relevant members of their communities
5
Caregivers are reminded to bring infants to free, government-provided vaccination clinics
6
Babies are protected from deadly diseases and others are also protected via herd immunity
Why have we chosen this method?
Impactful
Cost-effective
Evidence-based
This method is supported by high-quality, recent, local evidence from Haryana, India.
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A large-scale randomised controlled trial, conducted by a team from MIT's Poverty Action Lab including two recent Nobel laureates - Esther Duflo and Abhijeet Banerjee - found that this method significantly increased the number of children attending government-run immunisation camps by 22%.
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Find out more here (study summary), here (study publication) and here (summary of soon-to-be-published larger study which compared this method to others).