Southeast Asia is in varying stages of recognising life-course immunisation as an important part of healthy ageing. A tailored yet concerted approach for countries in Southeast Asia is needed to understand the benefits and facilitate solutions to integrate and encourage uptake of life-course immunisation within healthy ageing programs.
Explore the regional initiatives below in response to the key challenges towards vaccination uptake or click on the individual country tabs to take a deep dive into the challenges and solutions for each country.
Recognising the importance of life-course immunisation
Lack of awareness and disinformation around vaccines are just some of the reasons that create barriers to recognising life-course immunisation as an important part of healthy ageing policies. It also impacts effective vaccine administration in countries that already recognise healthy ageing as an important pillar.
There is an urgent need to understand the gaps and challenges in implementing life-course immunisation as part of healthy ageing policies and drive the needed change.
Awareness and education
Awareness about the benefits and positive impact of life-course immunisation are low – not many realise that immunisation not only helps to reduce the risk and severity of infectious diseases but also reduces complications for those with chronic diseases. Consequently, low awareness translates into low uptake of immunisation across the life-course.
As life-course immunisation ultimately helps to keep populations healthy and well, it is crucial to raise awareness not only among the public, but among healthcare providers as advocates.
In an effort to understand awareness and sentiments around vaccines, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Lloyd’s Register Foundation Institute for Public Understanding of Risk, supported by Sanofi, have undertaken social insight gathering metrics across Asia Pacific. The study covers general vaccination sentiments and themes observed over time, across both mass and social media platforms. These insights detect specific public concerns about individual vaccines, to prompt practical solutions to address in uptake campaigns.
Financing immunisation across the life-course
For certain countries in the region, an overall lack of public immunisation policy frameworks and implementation can hinder the financing and delivery of life-course immunisation. In developing policy frameworks for sustainable financing of public immunisation, 4 key elements should be considered: payment, programme, performance and process.
With a shrinking working population and a higher dependency ratio of the elderly on the working population, more creative methods of financing and delivery that involve the whole system are needed.
Resources:
Read ‘The Decade of Healthy Ageing in ASEAN: Role of Life-course Immunisation’ report by the EU-ASEAN Business Council, KPMG in Singapore and Sanofi, supported by the Western Pacific Pharmaceutical Forum around the healthy ageing barriers in Southeast Asia and an urgent need to have a greater focus on the implementation of life-course immunisation.
Life-course immunisation (LCI) is one of the most cost-effective public health interventions, which helps to keep populations healthy and productive by mitigating health complications, no matter how old they are. Over three years on from when the COVID-19 virus was first detected, how far have we come in recognising the value of vaccination and subsequently how we fund and rollout LCI programmes in Southeast Asia? Find out more about the ‘4P framework’ on funding LCI in this whitepaper by EU-ABC, supported by Sanofi.
KPMG in Singapore and Sanofi, with the support of the World Economic Forum, published a white paper – “UHC 2.0: Charting A Course To Sustainable Healthcare And Financing In The Asia-Pacific” – explaining gaps in current healthcare delivery and financing models, and solutions towards ensuring that healthcare delivery and financing designs in Asia Pacific can sustain themselves.