Child survival as a primary goal

The immunisation programme promoted 13 years ago by the “la Caixa” Foundation and Gavi, the Global Alliance for Vaccines, has inoculated more than 6.3 million children in Africa and Latin America.

According to the WHO, three children die every 60 seconds from diseases that could have been prevented with the right vaccines.

In the context of the Covid-19 crisis, the importance of childhood immunisation in the world’s poorest countries is accentuated, because if vaccination programmes are suspended, there is a risk of adding new outbreaks and potential new pandemics caused by vaccine-preventable diseases. Collateral damage from the coronavirus may lead to an increase in child mortality for the first time in many years, and the deteriorating health of a region or country will affect its economy and level of development.

For all these reasons, the pioneering child immunisation programme in areas with difficult access to healthcare in Africa and Latin America that the “la Caixa” Foundation has been promoting for more than a decade, together with Gavi, the Global Alliance for Vaccines, with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and with the collaboration of the Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), is of vital importance. The programme was launched in 2008 with the aim of guaranteeing survival, childhood’s  first right, and thirteen years later, more than 6.3 million children in particularly vulnerable areas of Africa and Latin America have been vaccinated, and now it has its eyes set on immunisation against pneumonia in Mozambique.

Solidarity from Asturian companies

It is important to highlight that, thanks to the solidarity of different Asturian companies, 66,378 particularly vulnerable children in Africa and Latin America have been immunised against diseases which, although preventable, pose a serious risk to their lives due to the difficulties of access to healthcare in their countries of origin.

Among these is TSK. Its CEO, Joaquín García Rico, assures that they are very committed to the campaign. “Our company has been developing projects in Africa and Latin America for years, and we are aware of the importance of initiatives such as this one, with which we have been collaborating since 2013, and we would like to thank them for their work and involvement. At TSK we are convinced that social commitment is inherent to business activity”.