Global childhood vaccination levels have stopped, leaving millions more children unvaccinated or under-vaccinated than before the pandemic, the UN warned Monday, warning of worrisome coverage gaps that might lead to disease outbreaks such as measles.
According to figures given by UN health and children’s agencies, 84 percent of children, or 108 million, will have had three doses of the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTP) vaccine in 2023, with the third dosage serving as a significant milestone for worldwide immunization coverage.
This percentage was unchanged from the previous year, indicating that the modest progress seen in 2022 after the steep drop during the COVID-19 crisis has “stalled,” the organizations cautioned. Prior to the pandemic, the rate was 86% in 2019.
“The latest trends demonstrate that many countries continue to miss far too many children,” UNICEF chief Catherine Russell said in a joint statement.
In fact, 2.7 million more children were unvaccinated or under-vaccinated last year than before the pandemic in 2019, according to the groups. “We are off track,” World Health Organization vaccine chief Kate O’Brien told reporters. “Global vaccine coverage has yet to fully recover from the dramatic backsliding that we witnessed during the pandemic.”
“This puts the lives of the most vulnerable children at risk,” O’Brien warned.
Even more concerning is that more than half of the world’s unvaccinated children live in 31 countries with fragile, conflict-affected settings, where they are especially vulnerable to contracting preventable diseases due to lack of access to security, nutrition, and health services.
The WHO and UNICEF also expressed concern over lagging vaccination rates against measles, one of the world’s most infectious diseases, amid an exploding number of outbreaks around the world.
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