2023-07-18 15:32:36
According to new data published by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), childhood vaccination has resumed worldwide following a significant drop linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. 19. According to the figures, there were four million more children vaccinated in 2022 than in 2021.
“So this is good news. On average, countries around the world are recovering and approaching the level of immunization they had reached before the pandemic arrived,” said Director of the Department of Immunization and Vaccines at WHO, Kate O’Brien. , to AFP. “These data are encouraging,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
Strong disparities
In 2022, 20.5 million children did not receive one or more basic vaccines, compared to 24.4 million in 2021. Despite these “promising signs”, coverage still does not reach pre-pandemic levels (18, 4 million), which, according to UN agencies, puts children at serious risk of epidemics. And “the recovery is very uneven,” noted Kate O’Brien.
Rich countries are doing relatively well and the WHO has also found that “some countries – particularly some very large low-middle-income countries, such as India and Indonesia”, have seen a very strong recovery, it said. she indicated. She explained that the countries that see their vaccination coverage recover are generally those that invested in these programs on a regular basis before the pandemic, also citing Nepal, Kenya and Bangladesh.
A measles alert
On the other hand, “in all low-income countries, the recovery is just beginning, if it exists in some of these countries”, indicated Kate O’Brien. Overall, a major concern remains vaccination once morest measles, one of the most infectious pathogens, which has not recovered as well as other vaccines.
Coverage for the first dose of the measles vaccine increased to 83% in 2022, from 81% in 2021, but remains below the 86% reached in 2019. In contrast, vaccine coverage once morest the human papillomavirus (HPV) exceeded pre-pandemic levels for the first time last year. The UN launched a “big catch-up” campaign for childhood vaccinations almost three months ago, concentrated in twenty countries where three-quarters of the children in the world who missed vaccines in 2021 live.
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