Regular readers will be very aware that I have been sponsoring a Written Declaration (similar to a House of Commons Early Day Motion) in the European Parliament on access to vaccination and immunisation in developing countries.

I am absolutely delighted to tell you that this Declaration has received enough signatures to be adopted as a resolution of the European Parliament. I will be speaking on this in the EuroParl Chamber later today. 

My thanks to my fellow MEPs who jointly the Declaration  – Veronique de Keyser, a Belgium Socialist and Democrat Group member, Sean Kelly from Ireland who belongs to the EPP Group, British Liberal-Democrat Bill Newton-Dunn and Marie-Christine Vergiat, a member of the Communist Party in France. 

 The Written Declaration urged the European Commission to make a continued commitment to reducing the number of vaccine preventable deaths in its future action. You may read the full text here: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2f%2fEP%2f%2fNONSGML%2bWDECL%2bP7-DCL-2012-0004%2b0%2bDOC%2bPDF%2bV0%2f%2fEN 

Thanks too to GAVI – the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, Global Health Advocates, the One Campaign and Results UK for all their help in getting signatures during the past few months.

While there is no doubt that there has been progress increasing vaccination coverage around the world, it is estimated that 1.7 million children continue to die of vaccine preventable diseases like polio each year. We can only hope that the Written Declaration will help in some way to reduce this number.