Breakthrough for Child Survival in the Poorest Countries and America’s Cities

The GAVI Alliance and Johns Hopkins University schools of Public Health and Nursing are collaborating to present “Breakthrough for Child Survival in the Poorest Countries and America’s Cities” an educational and celebratory program highlighting Baltimore’s progress in improving childhood vaccination rates. The event will be held July 22 at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Sheldon Hall (W1214).

Baltimore was selected to host the first in a series of child survival events because it has notably boosted immunization coverage in the city. Immunization saves more lives than any other health intervention. Johns Hopkins and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization regularly partner to prevent child mortality through immunization. The Alliance has vaccinated more than 250 million children and averted 5.4 million deaths in the world’s 72 poorest countries since 2000.

World Health Statistics show that infectious diseases, led by pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria, account for two thirds of the 8.8 million child deaths under age 5 worldwide. New vaccines, including the pneumococcal vaccine developed in part at Johns Hopkins, can significantly bring those numbers down, saving millions more lives by 2015.

Program Agenda