Why is immunisation important for public health?
Immunisation is quite simply the best buy after safe water and sanitation. Immunisation as a public health intervention has had more impact on bottom line public health than any other intervention in history.
What is the best way of ensuring that people who need vaccinations have access to them?
We need to do a better job of listening to communities, we need to do a better job of listening to our populations, so that those vaccination services are delivered in a way that they want them to be delivered. So in other words, so they're more accessible, and they're more appealing, those services to the communities that wish to vaccinate.
At the moment we don't do a good enough job at that. In all honesty, we talk about patient centric care, we talk about community centric health care delivery, but we don't do a good enough job of tailoring our immunisation programmes to the needs of populations that are marginalised and ultimately populations that are susceptible to these diseases because they're not vaccinated.
What excites you the most about vaccination in the future?
Of course, there are a number of different technological advancements, which I find very exciting, such as the micro needle or the patch which will eliminate the need of the use or need of an injection, which I think will be a remarkable achievement in itself.
What I'm most excited about is bringing in other disciplines to how we look at vaccination and vaccination behaviours, how we assure that more people are vaccinated in the future, and more populations are protected against these very dangerous diseases.