The draft National Immunization Program for 2016- 2020, which is the fifth document of the kind, is available for public debates. The fourth program, approved in 2010, expires this year, IPN reports.

The implemented immunization programs helped liquidate smallpox and poliomyelitis. In 2011-2014, there were recorded no cases of tetanus and diphtheria and indigenous cases of rubella. Compared with 2000, the number of cases of mumps in 2014 decreased from 1,949 to 51, of viral hepatitis B – from 751 to 50, while in children from 85 to three cases. There were localized and liquidated the hotbeds of measles following the importation of this disease in 2012- 2014. The immunization contributed to the diminution of the general mortality of children under five from 90 cases per 1,000 children in 1990, to 46 cases in 2013.

“To maintain the achieved results, we must continue the vaccination and include all the risk groups in the vaccination program. If the immunization rate is decreased, the morbidity trough infectious diseases will gradually grow,” said the Ministry of Health, explaining the necessity of a new immunization program.

“Furthermore, the presence of such a document is a precondition for Moldova to benefit from the assistance of the World Health Organization and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization in introducing new vaccines that are very expensive.”

The draft National Immunization Program provides for the vaccination of all the risk groups and persons at risk in accordance with the international quality and safety standards. It will be implemented with the allocations from the state budget and with the support of foreign donors (GAVI), which will stop allocating financial resources in 2017 and the Government will have to fully cover the related costs.

According to World Bank studies, the investments in immunization have a profitability of 1:4.