A recent analysis stated that the improvements made in the routine immunisation of children over the past ten years have been lost.Because to lockdowns caused by the Covid epidemic around the world, about 67 million children missed normal vaccinations between 2019 and 2021, according to the United Nations (UN). A recent report from UNICEF, the UN organisation for children, stated that “more than a decade’s worth of hard-won improvements in routine childhood immunisation have been eroded.”Returning to normal “will be difficult” because the immunisations have been “severely disrupted,” the organisation warned. According to UNICEF, 48 million of these people did not receive any routine vaccinations at all, raising worries about potential polio and measles outbreaks.
As the percentage of children receiving vaccinations fell to 81% for the first time since 2008, vaccine coverage among children decreased in 112 countries. The organisation stated that South Asia and Africa were particularly badly impacted and expressed concern that the backsliding during the pandemic occurred at the end of a decade in which, generally speaking, progress in children immunisation had stagnated.
“Vaccines have played a really important role in allowing more children to live healthy, long lives,” the report’s editor in chief Brian Keeley told AFP. “Any decline at all in vaccination rates is worrying.”