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Gro Harlem Brundtland, MD
Director-General
World Health Organization

JAMA. 2002;288:2532.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

One of the greatest public health victories of the last century was the discovery of safe and effective vaccines. Millions of lives have been saved and millions more people have been freed from the threat of killer diseases, including smallpox, polio, and measles.

Routine immunization saves more lives for the money spent than almost any other health intervention and gives some of the world's poorest and most vulnerable children a real chance in life.

The greatest triumph of immunization was the eradication of smallpox in 1977. An astounding 3 million lives per year have been saved through this first-ever eradication of a disease (see p 2533 in the printed journal).

The world will be free of polio by 2005. Since 1988, nearly 2 billion children have been immunized. But the last stretch is the most challenging part of the eradication initiative. It requires intensified national immunization . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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