To mark each World Immunization Week, the Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) invites members of its international networks of frontline health workers to submit photographs illustrating themselves and their daily working lives. 

The photographs they share provide unique insights into life as an immunization practitioner in a diverse range of countries across the Global South. They show the increasingly broad range of people, of varying ages, who now receive vaccines. They show the diverse range of people who are involved in vaccination. And they show the diverse range of sites relevant to immunization, often situated in challenging locations.

The material shared provides a rare glimpse of the countless person-hours that are expended in ensuring infants, children and adults are protected against vaccine-preventable diseases. There are vaccination sessions to be organized, in facilities or out in the community. There are discussion meetings to be arranged, to provide information about vaccines and to respond to any questions caregivers might have. There are fridges and freezers to be maintained, vehicles to be serviced, and databases to be kept up to date.

The people who perform these tasks are often underpaid (and sometimes not paid at all). Many go far beyond their formal duties in order to ensure that infants and others in their community do not fall sick when they could have been kept healthy by vaccines. It is thanks to their efforts that more than 150 million lives have been saved by vaccination since the EPI programme was launched 50 years ago. And it is down to their efforts that millions of lives are saved by vaccination each year.

Although the material rewards may not be great, every worker helping to ensure that immunization services are delivered is contributing to this incomparable prevention of illness and death. In this publication, as we do each year, we salute them and the invaluable work they carry out.