Polio or measles outbreaks soon? UNICEF’s ‘gains eroded’ assessment

Almost 67 million children partially or fully missed routine vaccines between 2019 and 2021 because of lockdowns amid Covid pandemic throughout the world, United Nations (UN) said. “More than a decade of hard-earned gains in routine childhood immunization have been eroded,” a new report from the UN’s children’s agency, UNICEF, said.

Getting back on track “will be challenging” as the vaccines have been “severely disrupted”, the body said. Of this, 48 million missed out on routine vaccines entirely, UNICEF said, raising concerns over potential polio and measles outbreaks.

Vaccine coverage in children declined in 112 countries as the percent of children vaccinated slipped to 81 percent for the first time since 2008. Africa and South Asia were particularly hard hit, the body warned, saying, “Worryingly, the backsliding during the pandemic came at the end of a decade when, in broad terms, growth in childhood immunization had stagnated.”

“Vaccines have played a really important role in allowing more children to live healthy, long lives,” the report’s editor in chief Brian Keeley told AFP, adding, “Any decline at all in vaccination rates is worrying.”

“You’ve got increasing number of conflicts, economic stagnation in a lot of countries, climate emergencies, and so on,” he said.

“This all sort of makes it harder and harder for health systems and countries to meet vaccination needs,” he explained.

With this, UNICEF called on nations “to double-down on their commitment to increase financing for immunization” with focus on vaccination.

“We cannot allow confidence in routine immunizations to become another victim of the pandemic,” Catherine Russell- UNICEF’s executive director- said, adding, “Otherwise, the next wave of deaths could be of more children with measles, diphtheria or other preventable diseases.”