Efforts to fill vaccination gap

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the number of children who received their recommended schedule of vaccinations in 2022 increased by four million compared to the previous year. Director of the Immunisation, Vaccines and Biologicals Department at the World Health Organization (WHO) Kate O’Brien said that this is a positive sign and countries across the world are witnessing a recovery in vaccination rates to near pre-pandemic levels.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also affirmed that the statistics reflect an encouraging achievement in global immunisation while saying that children will suffer many disadvantages if vaccination coverage is not promoted.

In fact, immunisation rates fell dramatically due to the COVID-19 pandemic in addition to the effects of conflicts, climate change and the food crisis. The UNICEF found that about 67 million children across the world missed out entirely or partially on routine immunisation in the 2019-2021 period due to blockages and interruptions in healthcare services due to the pandemic. This creates a risk of the outbreak of dangerous diseases such as polio and measles, seriously threatening the health of children.

Preliminary statistics on immunisation show signs of recovery but it is a big challenge to keep this positive development pace in the context of a series of global issues threatening to disrupt vaccination activities. A UNICEF report states that 20.5 million children missed out at least one dose of routine vaccines in 2022, higher than the number of 18.4 million in 2019, before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccine coverage rates in low-income countries have also recovered slowly.

Health experts have their own reasons to be concerned about the inequality in access to vaccines amongst countries. Of the 73 countries that recorded a sharp drop in vaccination rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, only 15 have reported vaccine coverage having returned back to pre-pandemic levels, while 34 countries have seen a continuous decline or stagnation while the rest are recovering.

In Africa, many children do not receive routine vaccinations because they live in remote areas or in conflict regions. The WHO is working with UNICEF, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to tackle the decline in routine childhood immunisation. The GAVI said it would vaccinate 300 million children between 2021-2025, helping prevent an additional 7-8 million deaths.

One reason for the decline in routine vaccination is that part of the population tends to ignore vaccination, not only for COVID-19 but also for other diseases. The results of a recent survey conducted by the Brazilian Society of Pediatrics (SBP) showed that the most common reason parents do not get their children vaccinated is fear of side effects and a distrust of the vaccine’s effectiveness. The leader of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that misinformation about vaccines is one of the biggest threats to public health.

Vaccines have saved many lives, helped people avoid dangerous diseases and reduced medical costs. In particular, vaccination helps protect children against the risks of disease in the early years of their lives. Therefore, promoting uniform vaccine coverage is an urgent global task to ensure no country is left behind.