Study: Vaccines have saved more than 150 million lives in the last 50 years

That is equivalent to a human life every ten seconds. The majority of them, 101 million, were infants, says the study from the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund Unicef, the vaccine alliance Gavi and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The study shows that vaccination is the most important tool for reducing child mortality, the organizations write in a joint press release.

The most effective of all was the measles vaccine, which accounted for 60 percent of the reduced infant mortality, and the organizations expect that it will also be the vaccine that saves the most lives in the future.

Over the past 50 years, vaccines against 14 diseases, including measles, diphtheria, hepatitis B, polio, tuberculosis and rotavirus, have helped reduce infant mortality by 40 percent globally and by more than 50 percent in Africa.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus refers to the vaccine as one of the most important inventions of all time.

– Thanks to vaccines, smallpox has been eradicated, polio is on the verge of extinction, and with the more recent developments of vaccines against diseases such as malaria and cervical cancer, we are pushing the limits of the disease, says Tedros.