The essential ingredient of any vaccination programme? Women | Sania Nishtar and Svenja Schulze

We call on leaders meeting at the World Health Summit to help remove all gender-related barriers to immunisation against diseases such as polio

• Dr Sania Nishtar is the chief executive officer of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and Svenja Schulze is Germany's federal minister for economic cooperation and development

When confronting diseases such as polio in Gaza and mpox outbreaks in some African countries, we must remember one of the biggest lessons ever learned in global health: women are essential to a solution.

Look at polio - a highly infectious disease caused by the poliovirus, which can result in disability, paralysis or death. In most countries, vaccinators are predominantly women, and yet women may face barriers in delivering vaccine services due to sexual harassment and violence, unsafe working conditions, poor or irregular pay and heavy workload.

Dr Sania Nishtar is the chief executive officer of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and Svenja Schulze is Germany's federal minister for economic cooperation and development

Gavi is funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a philanthropic organisation that also contributes funding to support the editorially independent global development section at the Guardian