Vaccination in Brazil sets global example, but challenges still abound
To prevent measles in a child from an indigenous territory in Maranhão state, to vaccinate a bedridden elderly man against pneumonia in a Rio favela, to protect a teenager injured by a wild bat from rabies in the woodlands of Minas Gerais, to immunize a baby against tetanus while still in the womb, to administer hundreds of millions of vaccines a year across over 5 thousand municipalities—doing all this safely and free of charge is what has made Brazil’s National Immunization Program (PNI) the largest in the world, a role model even to developed countries.For 50 years, the program has been carrying out the ambitious mission of immunizing a huge population spread over a continent-sized territory named Brazil, deeply marked by the diversity of cultures and landscapes and contrasting living...