The first official figures to reflect global childhood immunisation service disruptions due to COVID-19 shows that 23 million children missed out on basic vaccines through routine immunisation services in 2020. This is 3.7 million more than in 2019, shows official data published today, July 15, by World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF.
As per the data, a majority of countries last year experienced drops in childhood vaccination rates. Concerningly, most of these – up to 17 million children – likely did not receive a single vaccine during the year, widening already immense inequities in vaccine access.
The data paints a worrisome picture for India which tops the list of countries with the greatest increase in children not receiving a first dose of diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis combined vaccine (DTP-1) in 2020.
In 2019, over 1.4 million did not receive their first dose of DTP-1, which jumped to over 3.03 million in 2020, shows the latest official data. In neighbouring Pakistan, the numbers of such children increased from 567,000 in 2019 to 968,000 in 2020 (see table 1).
Children left unprotected
“The data shows that middle-income countries now account for an increasing share of unprotected children – that is, children missing out on at least some vaccine doses. India is experiencing a particularly large drop, with DTP-3 coverage falling from 91% to 85%,” reads the WHO’s press statement issued today.
“Even as countries clamour to get their hands on COVID-19 vaccines, we have gone backwards on other vaccinations, leaving children at risk from devastating but preventable diseases like measles, polio or meningitis,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director-general. “Multiple disease outbreaks would be catastrophic for communities and health systems already battling COVID-19, making it more urgent than ever to invest in childhood vaccination and ensure every child is reached,” he added.
India has the world’a largest immunisation programme and under its Universal Immunization Programme, Indian government provides vaccination to prevent vaccine-preventable diseases. These include diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, polio, measles, severe form of childhood tuberculosis and hepatitis B, hiaemophilus influenza type b (Hib) and diarrhoea.
Disruptions in immunisation services
As per the latest data, the WHO Southeast Asian and Eastern Mediterranean Regions were most affected due to the disruptions in immunisation services. As compared with 2019, 3.5 million more children across the world missed their first dose of DTP-1 while three million more children missed their first measles dose.
The health organisation has warned against a resurgence of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases. “Even before the pandemic, there were worrying signs that we were beginning to lose ground in the fight to immunize children against preventable child illness, including with the widespread measles outbreaks two years ago. The pandemic has made a bad situation worse,” said Henrietta Fore, executive director of UNICEF.
“With the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines at the forefront of everyone’s minds, we must remember that vaccine distribution has always been inequitable, but it does not have to be,” Fore added.
Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, global childhood vaccination rates against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles and polio had stalled for several years at around 86 per cent. This rate is well below the 95 per cent recommended by WHO to protect against measles. The pandemic has further led to a dip in immunisation numbers.
“This is a wake-up call – we cannot allow a legacy of COVID-19 to be the resurgence of measles, polio and other killers,” said Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. “We all need to work together to help countries both defeat COVID-19, by ensuring global, equitable access to vaccines, and get routine immunization programmes back on track. The future health and wellbeing of millions of children and their communities across the globe depends on it,” he pointed out.
Last summer, during the nation-wide lockdown, Gaon Connection, India’s biggest rural media platform, conducted a rural survey across across 179 districts in the country and found that only 55 per cent respondent rural households reported vaccination of children during the lockdown.
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A state-wise analysis of these households indicates Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh were the worst performers with 13 per cent and 39 per cent households reporting vaccination of children happened in their villages.
All these survey findings have been put together in the form of an exhaustive report – ‘The Rural Report-1: The impact of COVID19 on rural India’. The open access report is available on the website of Gaon Connection Insights.
Early stages of the third wave
Meanwhile, yesterday July 14, the WHO director-general Ghebreyesus warned nations that they have entered the early stages of the third wave of COVID-19. “The Delta variant is now in more than 111 countries and we expect it to soon be the dominant COVID-19 strain circulating worldwide if it isn’t already,” he was quoted as saying in media reports.
Ghebreyesus also pointed out that the new cases were being “fuelled by increased social mobility and the inconsistent use of proven public health and social measures”, and called out the “shocking disparity” in vaccine distribution.
