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Last year, about 25 million children around the world missed routine immunizations to protect themselves from life-threatening illnesses as the pandemic’s knock-on effect continues to disrupt global health care.
According to new figures released by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization, this is 2 million more than in 2020, when COVID-19 caused a blockade worldwide, and 6 million more than before the 2019 pandemic. many. (WHO).
UNICEF described the decline in vaccination rates as the largest sustained recession in childhood vaccination in the generation, returning vaccination rates to levels not seen since the early 2000s.
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Many wanted some ground recovery after the first year of the pandemic in 2021, but things really got worse and questioned the catch-up efforts.
“I want to overcome the urgency,” UNICEF senior immune specialist Niclas Danielson told Reuters. “This is a child’s health crisis.”
Authorities said the focus on the 2021 COVID-19 immune campaign, as well as the economic slowdown and burden on the health system, hindered a faster recovery from regular vaccination.
Coverage has declined in all regions. The numbers are estimated using data on the intake of three doses of diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough (DTP3) jabs, and indicate that both children who do not receive the jab at all and those who miss the jab are included. Three doses needed for protection. Globally, coverage has dropped 81% from 5% last year.
Data show that the number of unvaccinated “zero-dose” children increased by 37% between 2019 and 2021, with 13 to 18 million children, primarily in low- and middle-income countries. I became a person.
For many illnesses, more than 90% of children need to be vaccinated to prevent their outbreak. There are already reports of an increase in vaccine-preventable disease cases in recent months, including a 400% increase in measles cases in Africa in 2022.
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“If we don’t catch up with vaccination quickly and urgently, we will inevitably see more outbreaks,” said UNICEF’s Ephrem Tekl Lemango, with Yemen and Afghanistan on a large scale in recent months. He said it was one of the countries with the devastating measles outbreak.
In 2021, data showed that 24.7 million children missed the first dose of measles vaccine and another 14.7 million did not receive the required second dose. Coverage was 81%, the lowest since 2008.
The numbers are calculated using data from the national health system of 177 countries.