Ensuring vaccines for expanded immunisation programme

In 2023, the central budget will continue to be allocated for the Ministry of Health to purchase vaccines for the expanded programme on immunisation for all localities nationwide.

The Government assigned the health ministry to guide localities in purchasing vaccines, ensuring thrift, efficiency, and safety.

Launched in 1981, the national expanded programme on immunisation is providing vaccines to 12 preventable diseases, including tuberculosis, measles, and rubella.

According to the World Health Organisation, the programme has saved 42,000 lives and prevented more than 6.7 million childhood diseases in Vietnam.

The health ministry said new kinds of vaccines will be included in the programme in the coming time.

For example, the vaccine against Rotavirus - the most common cause of diarrhoeal disease among infants and young children - will be provided in a number of localities in 2023, and the whole nation in 2024.

Meanwhile, vaccines against pneumococcal disease, cervical cancer, and seasonal flu, will be supplied from 2025, 2026 and 2030, respectively./.

VNA