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Around 25 million children around the world missed routine vaccinations last year that protect against life-threatening diseases, as the repercussions of the pandemic continue to disrupt health care around the world.
This is two million more children than in 2020, when Covid-19 triggered lockdowns around the world, and six million more than before the pandemic in 2019, according to new figures released by the United Nations Children’s Fund. (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
Unicef described the fall in vaccination coverage as the biggest sustained decline in childhood vaccination in a generation, taking coverage rates to levels not seen since the early 2000s.
Many hoped that 2021 would make up some ground after the first year of the pandemic, but in reality the situation has worsened, raising questions about recovery efforts.
“I want the urgency to be understood,” Niklas Danielsson, a senior immunization specialist at Unicef, told Reuters. “This is a child health crisis.”
The agency said the focus on Covid-19 immunization drives in 2021, as well as the economic slowdown and pressure on health systems, had hampered a faster recovery for routine vaccinations.
The figures showed coverage decreased in all regions, and are calculated using data on the use of the three-dose diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTP3) vaccine, and include both children not receiving no vaccine as those who do not receive any of the three doses necessary for protection. Globally, coverage fell 5% to 81% last year.
The number of “zero dose” children, who did not receive any vaccine, rose 37% between 2019 and 2021, from 13 million to 18 million children mostly in low- and middle-income countries, the data showed.
Vaccination of minors is essential to avoid outbreaks of preventable diseases
For many diseases, more than 90% of children need to be vaccinated to prevent outbreaks. An increase in cases of vaccine-preventable diseases has already been reported in recent months, including a 400% increase in measles cases in Africa by 2022.
“If we don’t catch up on vaccination quickly and urgently, we will inevitably see more outbreaks,” said Unicef’s Ephrem Tekle Lemango, saying Yemen and Afghanistan were among the countries with large and disturbing measles outbreaks in the last months.
In 2021, 24.7 million children did not receive the first dose of the measles vaccine, and another 14.7 million did not receive the essential second dose, according to the data. Coverage was 81%, the lowest since 2008.
The figures are compiled with data from the national health systems of 177 countries.
*With Reuters; adapted from its original English version
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