25 million children missed out on crucial vaccination in 2021 due to Covid: UN

GENEVA: The UN says 25 million children worldwide have missed out on routine vaccinations against diseases such as diphtheria, mostly due to the global pandemic that disrupted normal health services or caused misinformation about vaccines.

The World Health Organization and UNICEF, in a report published on Friday, said that their figures show that 25 million children failed to get vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis last year. These markers of childhood vaccination coverage showed a downward trend that started in 2019.

"This is a red alert for child health," said Catherine Russell, UNICEF's Executive Director. "We are witnessing the largest sustained drop in childhood immunization in a generation," she said, adding that the consequences would be measured in lives lost.

Data shows that the majority of those who fail to receive immunizations are children living in developing countries such as Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and the Philippines.

While vaccine coverage declined in all world regions, East Asia and the Pacific were hit the worst.

Experts said this "historic setback" in vaccination coverage is particularly troubling because it is linked to rising rates of severe malnutrition.

Children who are malnourished have a relatively weaker immune system and infections such as measles can prove to be fatal to them.

"The convergence of a hunger crisis with a growing immunization gap threatens to create the conditions for a child survival crisis," the UN said.

The outbreak of preventable diseases like measles and polio has already been reported because of the low vaccine coverage rates, scientists said.

In March 2020, because of the rising Covid-19 pandemic, countries were asked by the WHO and partners to temporarily halt polio eradication efforts, AP reported.

More than 30 countries reported dozens of polio epidemics.

"This is particularly tragic as tremendous progress was made in the two decades before the COVID pandemic to improve childhood vaccination rates globally," said Helen Bedford, a professor of children's health at University College London, who was not connected to the UN report.

A consultant paediatrician at Britain's Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, Dr David Elliman said that it was important that the declining vaccination trends in children be reversed.

"The effects of what happens in one part of the world can ripple out to affect the whole globe," he said in a statement, noting the rapid spread of COVID-19 and more recently, monkeypox. "Whether we act on the basis of ethics or enlightened self-interest', we must put (children) top of our list of priorities."