Adam Fifield
Author, ‘A Mighty Purpose: How Jim Grant Sold the World on Saving Its Children’

Photo: UNICEF/NYHQ1987-0089/Isaac

When the international community observes World Immunization Week in April, we will probably hear a lot about “closing the immunization gap.”

Immunization is one of global health’s greatest success stories, saving up to 3 million young lives every year. The immunization gap is created by a host of factors: a lack of access to health care, prohibitively expensive vaccines, an inadequate supply, wars, a shortage of immunization data, lackluster political support, meager financial resources, illogical fears, and a dearth of knowledge about where to get vaccines. As the world once again ponders this perennially vexing question, it’s worth taking a step back and asking: what would Jim Grant do?

As the legendary head of UNICEF from 1980 to 1995, James Grant spurred a historic surge in childhood immunization rates and paved the way for much of the progress in recent years. Grant’s reply was simple: We stop the war.

He then tasked his Central America representative, a jovial Armenian-Lebanese man named Agop Kayayan, with arranging a truce that would allow El Salvador’s children to be immunized. (In recent years, immunizers have been murdered with alarming frequency; a January attack at an immunization center in Pakistan left 15 people dead.)

In Grant’s mind, the significance of the global immunization crusade went beyond vaccines, according to his friend and collaborator, Dr.

Starting in 2000, after the Gates Foundation funded the creation of the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), the sluggish immunization rates started to go up again.