PAHO - Pan American Health Organization

Published purpose

The goal of this project is to reduce illness and deaths among children due to vaccine-preventable diseases in Latin America and the Caribbean by focussing on municipalities with vaccine coverage under 95%. The project aims to increase vaccination coverage with quality supplies and surveillance by strengthening the Regional Expanded Program on Immunization in ways that protect the achievements to date and meet new challenges in immunization programming. This project supports basic routine immunization programming through the Canadian International Immunization Initiative (CIII), which CIDA has funded since 1998. The CIII has supported three phases of the Pan American Health Organization's (PAHO) Immunization in the Americas program, which aims to help countries in the Americas strengthen their routine national immunization programs. The PAHO program focuses on: improving the quality of vaccines and syringes used in national immunization programs; supporting innovative approaches to improving immunization uptake among hard-to-reach groups; strengthening laboratory capacity for the diagnosis of vaccine-preventable childhood diseases; and developing surveillance systems for the detection and management of vaccine-preventable diseases.