67 million children have missed routine vaccinations

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As a result of the corona pandemic, there has been a massive worldwide failure to vaccinate children against serious diseases. As the UN children’s fund Unicef ​​announced in a report on Thursday, some 67 million children missed regular vaccinations against, for example, measles and polio, in whole or in part, in the years 2019 to 2021. The causes were the lockdowns and health care restrictions during the pandemic. The report also found a decline in confidence in children’s vaccinations.

“More than a decade of hard-won advances in routine childhood immunization have been undermined,” the report said. Getting kids back on track with their vaccinations will be a “difficult task”.

Given these developments, governments worldwide must take measures, UNICEF demanded. Otherwise, “the next wave of deaths could affect a growing number of children contracting measles, diphtheria or other preventable illnesses.”

Confidence in vaccines is declining

According to the report, childhood immunization rates across 112 countries and globally fell by five percentage points to 81 percent — the lowest level since 2008. Africa and South Asia were particularly hard hit by this shortage of childhood immunizations.

The number of children vaccinated against measles worldwide fell from 86 percent to 81 percent between 2019 and 2021, according to the report. “Vaccinations have played a really important role in helping more children live healthy and long lives,” the report’s editor-in-chief, Brian Keeley, 75, told AFP. “Any drop in vaccination coverage is alarming.”

According to the report, confidence in the vaccination of children declined in a large majority of the countries surveyed: awareness of the importance of vaccination declined in 52 of the 55 countries. In most countries, people under the age of 35 and especially women reported that their confidence in routine childhood vaccinations tended to decline since the start of the pandemic.

Despite declining confidence, support for vaccinations remains relatively high, according to UNICEF. In nearly half of the countries surveyed, more than 80 percent of respondents said that vaccinating children is important.

New data “is disturbing”

However, a combination of factors could mean an increase in reluctance to vaccinate, the children’s charity warned. Think of uncertainty about how to deal with the corona pandemic, widespread disinformation, declining confidence in specialist knowledge and political polarization.

“At the height of the pandemic, scientists developed vaccines in a very short time that saved countless lives. But despite this historic achievement, fears and misinformation about vaccines are as pervasive as the virus itself,” said Catherine Russell, UNICEF Executive Director. falls victim to the pandemic.” (AFP)

Source: Blick