Bridging the Gap: Creating Vaccination Awareness and Improving Vaccination Coverage in India

Vaccines are saving millions of lives world over, but in India, we continue to experience critical challenges in implementing immunization of vaccines amongst all people. Despite of a tremendous progress in vaccine development in terms of safety and efficacy profile, there is still a huge void in immunization rate due to lack of awareness and accessibility, which requires immediate attention and resolution. Many diseases, including Typhoid, Influenza, Cervical cancer, Pneumonia, Shingles, etc. are preventable through vaccination but continue to affect a large number of individuals, which underscores the need of increasing vaccine awareness and immunization.

Why Awareness is Important: Myth-Busting and Barriers Breaking

Dr. Vivekanand. M. Kustagi, Consultant Pediatrician and Neonatologist, Sanjeevani Children Clinic, Bengaluru, highlights, “Even though vaccines are clinically effective, most people resist getting vaccinated. The reasons are several: they may not have access to accurate or sufficient information, certain cultural beliefs may influence their decisions, or they may lack adequate health education. Myths and incorrect information that go viral online discourage people from getting vaccinated. Therefore, clinical opinion leaders and healthcare system experts play a crucial role in championing and disseminating accurate information regarding vaccination and its benefits. This can be one of the solutions to higher adoption and increased use of vaccination in India.”

Low Vaccination Rates in India: The Real Picture
India carries a massive global disease burden that can be prevented by vaccines. Besides the whopping rise in typhoid, with approximately 10 million cases in 2021, India has a population of 511.4 million women aged 15 years and older who are at risk of developing cervical cancer. This is a grave scenario, with a much greater cervical cancer death rate, of 79,906 deaths every year. Invasive Pneumococcal Disease (IPD) is associated with high mortality in children under five years of age, resulting in up to 30% percent of deaths in India. The World Health Organization (WHO) states that India accounts for 36 percent of the total burden of clinical pneumonia in the South East Asia region. Despite all these issues, vaccination remains sub optimally used, and thus continues to be an ongoing public health burden. Pharmaceutical companies, NGOs, community-based organizations, local health workers, and public health initiatives can play an important role in awareness generation, myth-debunking, and vaccination facilitation in their own communities.

India: The World Leader in Vaccine Success

During the COVID-19 epidemic, India did an outstanding job in producing world-class quality vaccines. The quick scaling up of Covaxin and Covishield demonstrated India's scientific and manufacturing capabilities.

Since then, India has built many more research labs, streamlined its approval processes, and boosted funding for biotech start-ups. These actions have made India a world powerhouse of vaccine manufacturing. 

New Technologies for Future Vaccines

With incredible advancements in the works, vaccination technology has a bright future. Virus-Like Particles (VLP) vaccines and Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines are two of the most exciting innovations that have the potential to revolutionize vaccination. 

mRNA vaccines use synthetic genetic material to instruct cells to produce viral proteins that trigger an immune response. This platform, enabled us to develop COVID-19 vaccine within just 365 days vs traditional timeline of more than 5years and this technology is now being explored for HIV and cancer vaccines. 

VLP vaccine technology designed to resemble authentic viruses without causing infection, boost immune recognition, have already demonstrated success in HPV and hepatitis B vaccine and hold promise with malaria and emerging COVID-19 variants. 

India can emerge as a global leader through these advances and its scientific capacities to develop the next generation of vaccines that can offer wider immunity and faster reaction to new challenges.

The Goal: Providing Vaccines to All

Despite India's global leadership in vaccine research and development, vaccination of everyone in India, especially in remote and tribal enclaves, remains a priority. Digital health technology can maximize supply chains, reinforce health infrastructure, and increase vaccine delivery. Enacting laws ensuring everyone can get and pay for immunizations is equally important.  

Time to Act: Vaccines for ALL

The Government of India has been vigilant in this regard and taking steps to reduce the burden, especially of preventable diseases through increased vaccination, e.g. it aims to achieve a target of reducing pneumonia deaths among children to less than three per 1,000 live births by 2025. As a country, we possess the technological expertise, scientific ability, and the means to become a global leader in immunization. However, it can only be attained through collective attempts in vaccine study, awareness, quality policies, and access parity. It's a dream which can be achieved, making life-saving vaccines available to everybody, in any bracket of socioeconomic status. 

Novo Medi Sciences: The pioneer in Vaccines Business 

Novo Medi Sciences (Novo Group) has been at the forefront of addressing the nation's critical vaccination needs. Several vaccines, including Pneumococcal conjugate 13 valent vaccine for all age groups, World’s first single dose shingles vaccine for 40years and above, Meningococcal conjugate A,C,Y,W 135 vaccine, are currently in clinical trial and set to launch soon. 

Forum Bhagat, Managing Director of Novo Medi Sciences (Novo Group), shares more on the company's vision and progress. “With a vision of making vaccines accessible and affordable to all, Novo Medi Sciences (Novo Group), focuses on the development of Next generation vaccines such as introducing World’s Only Thermostable Varicella vaccine, India’s first Hand Foot and Mouth disease vaccine, World’s Only Single dose Shingles vaccine. The robust cold chain of Novo Medi Sciences ensures the maintenance of the quality of all products until it reaches the last mile, with a record of 'No-batch' recall ever. Novo Medi Sciences, with a legacy of over 75 years, continues to leverage today's technology and medical insights to achieve responsible, impactful innovation in the vaccines segment”.