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Podcast: Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters
Episode: COVID-19 is Interrupting Routine Childhood Vaccinations on a Global Scale
Description: Barbara Saitta is a nurse with Doctors without Borders who specializes in vaccination campaigns, primarily in poorer countries. She tells me that because of supply chain interruptions, a number of countries are running out of routine childhood vaccines. This includes vaccines for measles, polio, and the all-important pentavalent vaccine that protects against five common diseases. What is so alarming about the interruption of routine childhood vaccines is that there is a direct correlation between mass immunization and avoiding mass death. We kick off with a discussion of how vaccine campaigns generally operate in a developing country with...