2023-07-18 12:15:00
United Nations: Resumption of vaccination of children following its decline during the Corona epidemic
The United Nations indicated today (Tuesday) that the vaccination of children around the world, which decreased during the Corona pandemic, has resumed, but is still below the levels of the period that preceded the health crisis.
According to the latest data issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the number of children vaccinated in 2022 exceeded the year 2021 by four million.
“This is good news, on average, countries around the world are starting to recover and are getting closer to the level of immunization they reached before the pandemic,” WHO’s director of immunization, Kate O’Brien, told AFP.
In turn, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, indicated in a statement that “these are encouraging data.”
20.5 million children did not receive one or more basic vaccines in 2022, compared to 24.4 million children in 2021.
A Pakistani child receives the polio vaccine (AP)
Despite these “promising indicators”, the United Nations considers that immunizing children, which is still below pre-pandemic levels, puts them at risk of epidemics.
O’Brien saw that the resumption of immunization is not taking place at an equal pace among countries.
The general global concern remains with measles vaccination, which is one of the most dangerous and most contagious pathogens.
Coverage of the first dose of the measles vaccine increased to 83 percent in 2022, compared to 81 percent in 2021, but it is still less than the 86 percent achieved in 2019.
Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination coverage exceeded pre-pandemic levels for the first time last year.
About three months ago, the United Nations launched a “broad catch-up” campaign to vaccinate millions of children, and it was concentrated in twenty countries where three quarters of the world’s children who did not receive vaccines live in 2021.
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