Vaccination of children in the world is stagnant and still has not returned to the level before the covid-19 pandemic.
The World Health Organization drew attention to this today in a joint report (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). There are 2.7 million more children who have no or incomplete vaccination than in 2019.
“Recent trends show that many countries continue to neglect children,” said UNICEF Director-General Catherine Russell. In 2023, 108 million children received three doses of the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTP) vaccine, or 84 percent of those age-eligible. This percentage has not changed since 2022, when slight progress was recorded. In 2019, the last year before the coronavirus pandemic, vaccination coverage was 86 percent.
“We are behind schedule,” WHO director of immunization Kate O’Brien admitted at a press conference. “The world’s vaccination coverage has not yet fully recovered from the historic decline that occurred during the pandemic,” O’Brien explained.
Last year, 14.5 million children did not have a single dose of the vaccine, while the year before last there were 13.9 million and in 2019 there were 12.8 million children who were completely unvaccinated, according to data published today. “This puts the lives of the most vulnerable children at risk,” O’Brien warned.
Half of unvaccinated children live in 31 conflict-ridden countries. At the same time, these countries are particularly strongly exposed to the risk of the spread of some preventable diseases, due to the poor security situation and insufficient access to food and health services. In these countries, children are much more likely to miss the necessary revaccination.
To its third dose of the DTP vaccine, which is necessary to ensure effective protection, in the world 6.5 million children did not receive itresults from current data.
Differences in vaccination rates then contribute to the development of certain diseases, such as measles. The WHO and UNICEF have expressed concern over the delay in vaccination against one of the most infectious diseases amid an explosion of epidemics around the world. “The outbreak of measles is a warning sign of existing gaps in vaccination, which will hit the most vulnerable first,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement. In 2023, 83 percent of children worldwide received their first dose of measles vaccine, the same level as in 2022, but still below the pre-pandemic 86 percent.
Addition only 74 percent of those vaccinated against measles received the necessary second dose, while a vaccination rate of 95 percent is necessary to stop the epidemic, warn UN agencies. In 2023, over 300,000 cases of measles were recorded, which is almost three times more than in the previous year, pointed out Ephrem Lemango from UNICEF.
Source: zpravy.tiscali.cz
