Six million deaths are prevented annually due to vaccines, Logan Rae, the environment healthcare business excellence director of pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) said.
Moreover, vaccines save 750,000 children from disability every year, he said during a media workshop held in Prague last week, which preceded a seminar for doctors.
Speaking about some of the success stories, Mr Rae pointed out that smallpox has been eradicated and polio was eliminated from the western hemisphere because of vaccines.
"With luck, it won't be long before it (polio) is eliminated in other parts of the world," he said. Measles, he continued, is also controlled in parts of Europe and the Americas, while tetanus, diphtheria, rubella, meningitis and liver infection caused by Hepatitis B have been dramatically reduced thanks to vaccines.
"Vaccines have been one of the greatest health achievements in the industrialised world and, with the exception of clean drinking water, they are the most effective intervention in reducing and preventing the return of infectious diseases," he said.
Mr Rae pointed out that 26 diseases are now vaccine preventable, and a good number of others could be eliminated in the foreseeable future.
Despite the benefits of vaccines to prevent illness, Mr Rae said few countries spend more than one per cent of their health care budgets on prevention, preferring to spend more on treatment. He pointed out that investing in preventive medicine not only had a direct financial saving by reducing the cost of treatment but it also lowered the financial cost emanating from lost workdays.
"Increasing the health of the nation can also increase productivity," he said, adding that a 10-year gain in life expectancy translated into nearly one additional percentage point of annual growth of income per capita. Mr Rae said vaccines have been victims of their own success because disease is less visible.
"We have forgotten the severity of some diseases," vaccinology consultant Francis Andrè said. "Only 50 years ago hospitals were full of iron lungs to treat people with polio. We do not see this anymore, and people are becoming more confident. But if you stop vaccinating against polio, it will come back within a few years," he said.
Dr Andrè said people who fell ill after they took a vaccine questioned whether it was the vaccine that triggered their illness. However, he said, it was very difficult to prove this.
"Vaccines are supposed to stimulate immunity and not reduce it," he emphasised.
Referring to the misconception that taking the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine can lead to autism, Dr Andrè said while autism does start at the age that the vaccine is usually taken, no vaccine can change the genetic make-up of a child.
"Most adverse events caused by vaccines are minor and temporary, like a sore arm or mild fever," he said. Dr Andrè said only one of all the deaths reported to the Vaccines Adverse Event Reporting System between 1990 and 1992 was thought to have "possibly" been caused by a vaccine.
Moreover, he added, the 1994 report by the Institute of Medicine said the risk of death from vaccines was "extraordinarily low".
"A child is far more likely to be seriously affected by one of the infectious diseases than by any vaccine. The benefits of vaccination greatly outweigh the slight risk and many more ills and deaths would occur without vaccinations," he said.
GSK Biologicals vice president Philippe Monteyne said the pharmaceutical company, whose 2004 sales reached £1.2 billion, has a "rich pipeline" of vaccines. Among the vaccines which have either been filed for approval or are at the last stage of testing is a vaccine for human papilloma virus, which can lead to cervical cancer, the second most frequent cause of cancer in women over the age of 15 worldwide.
"Where screening programmes exist, one pap smear out of 15 is positive and requires a follow-up," he said, adding that 70 to 80 per cent of women are infected by the virus at least once during their lifetime. According to statistics gathered by the Malta National Cancer Registry, six women died of uterine cervix cancer last year.
Another vaccine in the pipeline, and which could be on the market next year, targets rotavirus, which can cause digestive problems and diarrhoea among young children.
"One in every six children will need a visit to the doctor and one in 45 will require hospitalisation," he said. Although mortality is low in Europe, with one death in every 55,000 cases, this goes up to a staggering one in 500 in the low-income countries.
A vaccine for the dreaded HIV virus is also in the pipeline, and is expected to be filed after 2000. Philip Carabott, head of the Genito Urinary Clinic, said the bottom line to stop the spread of the virus is to constantly encourage people to use condoms.
Dr Carabott said that if a vaccine was to become available there would still be the difficulty of reassuring people that this would not give them the virus.
Moreover, he said, some people would not want to take the vaccine because they would see it as admitting that they lead a risky lifestyle.
Dr Carabott pointed out that most at risk was the sub-Sahara region, countries which would find it hard to afford it. But Dr Monteyne said complex tiered prices allow developing countries to get vaccines at a lower price at the same time as developed countries get them. He explained that the price of vaccines is high for the private market, low for the private sector and very low for organisations like the World Health Organisation and Unesco.
As the world braces itself for an influenza pandemic, Dr Monteyne said the company will be submitting a mock file for the pandemic vaccine before the end of the year. Since nobody knows which virus will be causing the next pandemic, it is not possible to present the full data, but presenting a mock file will mean that everything will be pre-licensed so that the company can start producing the vaccine as soon as WHO provides the sample.
"As soon as the pandemic starts we need to switch to producing the vaccine against that particular virus causing the pandemic," he said.
Dr Monteyne stressed that since nobody would have been exposed to the virus causing the pandemic, one dose might not protect fully and therefore people would need two doses.
Although influenza does not raise much concern, Dr Monteyne said the annual influenza is the number one cause of infectious disease and death in the developed world, claiming up to 500,000 lives annually.