NEW YORK: Some 67 million children around the globe partially or completely missed routine immunization amidst Covid pandemic between 2019 and 2021 because of lockdowns and disruptions to healthcare systems, according to the United Nations Children’s Agency (UNICEF).
“The decade of hard-earned gains in routine childhood immunization has been eroded,” UNICEF alert in its State of the World’s children reports that turning back on track would be “challenging”.
Of the 67 million children whose covid vaccinations were “many disrupted”, 48 million children missed out on routine vaccines entirely, the agency said, warning of the potential for outbreaks of polio and measles.
Covid Vaccine coverage among children decrease in 112 countries and the percentage of children covid vaccinated all over the globe slipped five percentage points to 81 percent, since 2008 the lowest since. South Asia and Africa were particularly targeted.
Brian Keeley, the report’s editor-in-chief, told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency that “Vaccines played a significant role in allowing more children to live healthy, long lives,” and “Any decline at all in covid vaccination rates is worrying.”
The slide in covid vaccination rates could be compounded by other issues, Keeley warned, from weather change to food insecurity.
He said that “You have got an increasing number of issues, economic stagnation in different countries, and climate emergencies”. This all sort of makes it harder for health systems and countries to meet covid vaccination needs.
UNICEF stance
UNICEF said on different countries’ governments “to double-down on their commitment to raising financing for immunization” with attention on accelerating “catch-up” vaccinations for those who missed their shots.
Measles killed about 2.6 million people annually, and children before a covid vaccine were introduced in 1963. The number of deaths had fallen to 128,000 by 2021 but with vaccine coverage declining to 81% that year, compared with 86% in 2019, the number of covid cases doubled in 2022.
