Millions of children around the world missed some or all of their childhood vaccinations over the past two years because of conflicts, climate emergencies, misinformation campaigns, and Covid vaccine efforts that diverted resources.
According to the report, it is the largest back slide in 30 years. It has created conditions that endanger the lives of millions of children.
The head of advocacy for Unicef said that the situation was an emergency for children's health. It isn't in a few years' time, it's quite soon.
Unicef uses DTP3 as a benchmark for immunization coverage, and the percentage of children who had received three doses of the vaccine fell over the course of the last two years. The Measles vaccine rate fell to 81 percent. herd immunity is dependent on a vaccine coverage rate of 94 percent.
25 million children didn't get a basic intervention to protect them from lethal illnesses.
The number of zero-dose children, those who have not received a single dose of the most basic vaccines, increased dramatically during the Pandemic. Half of all children who die before 5 years old are in this group.
The agency had been hoping that after a sharp decline in 2020 that was driven by school closings and other Covid response measures, childhood vaccine coverage would rebound in 2021.
The problem worsened. The report found that DTP3 and Measles coverage is at a low level.
The rate of vaccine coverage was the same as in 2008. The number of children who do not complete vaccinations, or do not even start, is the largest in the last 30 years because of the increase in the birth cohort.
As health systems adjusted to the demands of the Pandemic, he and many others in the child immunization field anticipated a recovery. He said that misinformation campaigns about Covid vaccine and distrust of governments over public health measures spilled over to deter routine immunizations.
Critical access to freezers and health workers were diverted as health systems in the poorer countries scrambled to carry out limited Covid vaccinations.
Through the 1990s and the first decade of this century, the world made progress on vaccine coverage for children. The children in active war zones or in nomadic communities were the hardest to reach and the rates began to go down. There was a redoubled commitment to reach the remaining pockets of zero-dose children with the help of organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Covid has taken away a lot of the attention.
India, Nigeria, Indonesia, Ethiopia, and the Philippines had the highest number of children who missed out on vaccines.
Brazil was on the list of the 10 most-affected countries, a huge change for a country that used to have high vaccine coverage rates. There were no vaccines given to 26 percent of Brazilian infants in the year 2020.
The work of 30 years has been lost in a single night.
She said that vaccinations became politicized in Brazil during the Covid epidemic. Even though Brazil has one of the world's highest death rates from the coronaviruses, the federal government downplayed the significance of it.
It was the first time in Brazil that the federal government did not recommend a vaccine.
She said that anti-vaccination groups that had not had a lot of purchase in Brazil moved into the country during the Pandemic.
At a time when Brazilians were removed from the serious illnesses they were being urged to vaccine their children against, Dr. Domingues said, they were questioning the necessity.
She said that parents don't know the impact of vaccines on diseases. It's clear that acceptance of the pneumonia vaccine is higher than that of the vaccine for the disease. The parents don't want their children to be exposed to the disease. They wondered if they needed to do it since it had been 30 years without a case of the disease.
She said they have a clear sign of the risk after a few cases of the disease were found in So Paolo. She said that Measles gives us a concrete example of what could happen if we don't take preventative measures.
Almost half of infants in the Philippines did not have any vaccinations last year. Tough Covid public health measures are to blame for the problem. If you are not allowed to take your children out apart from certain hours of the day, if they can't go to school, if living costs are increasing, going to a health enter to have your child vaccine drops down on your priorities.
The situation in the Philippines is complicated by the fact that a lot of people distrusted the vaccine after it was given to many of them.
An extraordinary amount of resources and commitment would be required to bring vaccine levels back up to where they were before.
She said that it wouldn't be enough to just go back to business as usual. There are a growing number of children who are completely unimmunized living in countries with high levels of malnutrition.
One in 10 children hospitalized with the illness is dying in Zimbabwe. In low-income countries the mortality rate is one in 100 and in high-income countries it is one in 1000.
The Task Force for Global Health's Dr. Fabien Diomande said that reversing the decline in childhood immunizations would require new ingenuity and resources.
He said that the emergencies are not going to disappear. Covid will still be with us. Climate crises will continue. We need to learn how to deal with public health emergencies.
There are some lessons to be learned from Covid vaccination efforts, according to Dr. Domingues. Pop-up vaccinations were made available at night and on weekends in Brazil.
Ms. Caprani said that while there was a renewed interest in global health cooperation because of Covid, it risked being overshadowed by the simple intervention needed to address the child immunization crisis: deployment of thousands of community health workers.
She said that they weren't going to solve the problem with posters or social media posts. To build trust, you need reliable, well-trained, properly compensated community health workers who are out there day in, day out. There aren't enough of them
He reported from Manila.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
