Chinese experts stress improving seniors' immunization as society rapidly ages

Health experts have called for developing vaccines to tackle diseases primarily affecting seniors and devising innovative methods to expand vaccine acceptance among the age group with China's swelling elderly population, China Daily reported Thursday.

As society rapidly ages and people born during the baby boom of the 1960s get older, China is and will be under great pressure to provide adequate social, medical and rehabilitation services for them, Feng Zijian, former deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and vice-president of the Chinese Preventive Medicine Association, was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

"The growing elderly population will be confronted with a greater risk of infections. We are in need of more vaccines to reduce infections during old age," he said.

People aged 60 and above accounted for 19.8 percent of the country's population last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. It is estimated that only 15 years will pass before the proportion reaches 30 percent.

A number of existing vaccine products are effective and important tools to protect the health of the elderly, such as doses against COVID-19, influenza, respiratory syncytial virus and herpes zoster, according to the newspaper.

"In the future, vaccines to tackle pneumonia are also expected to hit the market," said Feng, calling for more efforts to research vaccines that can protect the elderly against antimicrobial-resistant bacterial pathogens and opportunistic infections.

International drugmakers have begun gearing up for creating more vaccines for adults and the elderly since a couple of years ago, Zhang Yuntao, chief scientist at China National Biotech Group, was quoted as saying.

Globally, the market share of adult vaccines rose from 35.6 percent in 2017 to over 50 percent in 2021. In China, the market share of adult vaccines rose from 32 percent in 2018 to 56 percent in 2021, according to Zhang.

Besides advancing vaccine development, Feng also suggested improving vaccination services for the elderly, including rolling out targeted advocacy campaigns.

For years, China has been focusing on ramping up vaccination services targeting babies and children. "The next step is to improve the accessibility and convenience of elderly vaccination services to meet the demands of seniors," he was quoted as saying.