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25 million children missed out on life-saving vaccines due to Covid: UN| Top 10
Misinformation and service and supply chain disruption, due to the pandemic, are said to be the top factors behind the decline in numbers.
The world has seen the biggest backslide in three decades in childhood vaccinations in 2021, which has been primarily triggered by the pandemic, the United Nations has said in a new report, sounding an alarm. Twenty-five million children are said to be missing out on life-saving vaccines, the report underlines. “Inadequate coverage levels have already resulted in avoidable outbreaks of measles and polio in the past 12 months, underscoring the vital role of immunization in keeping children, adolescents, adults, and societies healthy,” underlines the report.
Here are ten points on the latest UN report:
1. A 5 per cent drop was recorded between 2019 and 2021, according to the latest data shared by the UN, in the percentage of children who got three doses of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP3). The DTP3 coverage is considered a marker for immunisation, within and across countries. says UN.
2. “It’s not a question of either/or, it’s possible to do both,” WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said in response to the latest data that shows the burden on healthcare systems worldwide due to the pandemic. “Planning and tackling COVID-19 should also go hand-in-hand with vaccinating for killer diseases like measles, pneumonia and diarrhea,” he added.
3. Several factors have been attributed to the decline in the vaccine coverage. An increased number of children “living in conflict and fragile settings where immunization access is often challenging,” is one of the factors cited in the UN report.
4. Increased misinformation, and service and supply chain disruption, due to the pandemic, besides “resource diversion to response efforts, and containment measures that limited immunization service access and availability,” are among other factors that blocked the child vaccine programmes in several parts of the world.
5. The report highlights a decline in vaccine coverage in every region, with the East Asia and Pacific region recording the steepest reversal in DTP3 coverage where a drop of nine percentage points was registered in just two years.
6. India, Nigeria, Indonesia, Ethiopia and the Philippines recorded the highest numbers of the 18 of 25 million children who did not receive a single dose of DTP during the year.
7. Calling it a “red alert for child health”, Catherine Russell, UNICEF executive director, said: “We are witnessing the largest sustained drop in childhood immunization in a generation. The consequences will be measured in lives.”
8. Even as 2021 was anticipated as the year of recovery, the 25 million-figure was two million more than the number of children who missed out on vaccine for the preventable diseases in 2020 and six million more than in 2019.
9. In a huge blow to fight against cervical cancer, a quarter of the global coverage of human papillomavirus HPV vaccines achieved in 2019 has been lost.
10. A staggering drop of 81 per cent was seen in first dose measles coverage, the lowest figures since 2008.
