Historic setback: the percentage of vaccinated children decreased with Covid

GENEVA.— The percentage of children vaccinated against diseases as Measles, tetanus and diphtheria stagnated in 2023 And there are still tens of millions of them without receiving this immunization, warned the United Nations Organization (HIM), who added that coverage remains below what it was before the pandemic.

The crisis sanitaria that affected the world by Covid-19 It has paralyzed vaccination programs in many national health networks, especially in developing countries, and although initiatives have been undertaken to recover what was lost, they have not yet been entirely successful, according to figures from the World Health Organization. (OMS) and the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef).

Thus, the percentage of children who last year received at least one of the two doses required by the vaccine against measles was 83%the same as in 2022, when in 2019, before the pandemic, it was 86%, explained in a press conference the global director of immunization of Unicef, Ephraim Mango.

The number of children worldwide who have not received a single dose of the measles vaccine has also increased to 22.1 million, compared with 19.3 million five years ago.

On a positive note, the percentage of children who received the full course was higher in 2023 (74%) than in 2022 (73%) and 2019 (71%).

Countries with the lowest measles vaccination coverage are often places in conflict or vulnerable, although in first place is a European nation, Montenegrowith a rate of just 24%, followed by North Korea (28%), RCentral African Republic (41%) y Yemen (45%).

“Three out of four children live in areas with a high risk of measles outbreaks,” warned Lemango, who recalled that in 2023, 300,000 cases of the disease were confirmed worldwide, almost three times as many as in 2022.

Similarly, the percentage of children who received the three doses of the DTP vaccine (against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough) are required It was 84% ​​last year, the same percentage as in 2022 but two percentage points less than in 2019.

89% received at least one or two doses of this vaccine, again a rate identical to that of the previous year and lower than the pre-pandemic rate of 90%.

Millions of children without vaccines

Up to 14.5 million children had not received by 2023 not a single dose of this basic vaccine for the prevention of these diseases, when in 2019 this figure was 12.8 million.

In this case, the countries with the lowest vaccination rates are North Korea (41%), Papua New Guinea (45%) and Somalia (52%)while Venezuela It is in eighth place from the bottom with a coverage of only 67%.

“Global immunization coverage has not yet recovered from the historic setback it suffered during the pandemic,” summed up the director of WHO vaccination programs, Katherine O’Brien.

“The Big Update”

WHO, UNICEF and the GAVI Vaccine Alliancewhich collaborates with both countries on immunization in developing countries, has launched the “Great Catch-Up” strategy to recover pre-2020 figures, and according to Lemango, this has been achieved in 25 of the 35 countries where this strategy has been applied.

On the positive side, OMS y Unicef They highlighted the great progress in vaccination against the human papillomavirus (HPV), which in the long term can cause cervical cancer in women.

Global coverage in 2023 was 27%, seven points higher than in 2022 and 10 points higher than in 2019, benefiting mainly from the introduction of single-dose vaccines as opposed to traditional ones that required two inoculations.

This improvement, O’Brien said, was also partly due to the HPV vaccine rollout campaign in countries with large populations such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and Nigeria, with the support of GAVI.

Those responsible for OMS y Unicef They recalled that it is estimated that vaccines have saved some 154 million lives in the last half century, especially those developed against measles, responsible for approximately 60% of lives saved.