The WHO on vaccines and vaccination – Why it is important

WHO’s vaccination work represents one of the clearest examples of sustained, science‑based global cooperation in public health, and the attached summary illustrates how far‑reaching and internally coherent this effort has become across the life course. At its core, WHO articulates a simple but ambitious objective: every child and every adult, in every country, should have access to timely, effective vaccination, with schedules that are grounded in robust evidence and adapted to local epidemiology and health‑system realities. At a time when previously robust, evidence‑driven vaccine recommendation processes were eliminated—most visibly in the recent overhaul of the US childhood schedule—WHO’s role as a globally trusted, methodologically transparent reference point for vaccination policy has become even more critical. WHO: A coherent life course vision By framing immunization “from birth through healthy ageing”, WHO moves beyond a narrow childhood program and positions vaccination as a continuous protective strategy, integrating maternal, adolescent, adult and older age vaccines...