United Nations alarmed as global childhood immunisation levels stall

Global childhood vaccination levels have stalled, leaving millions unvaccinated, risking outbreaks of diseases like measles, warns the United Nations.

Global childhood vaccination levels have stalled, leaving millions more children un- or under-vaccinated than before the pandemic, the United Nations (UN) said Monday, July 15, 2024, warning of dangerous coverage gaps, enabling outbreaks of diseases like measles.

In 2023, 84 percent of children, or 108 million, received three doses of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP), with the third dose serving as a key marker for global immunisation coverage, according to data published by the UN health and children’s agencies.

That was the same percentage as a year earlier, meaning that modest progress seen in 2022 after the steep drop during the Covid-19 crisis has “stalled”, the organisations warned. The rate was 86 percent in 2019 before the pandemic.

“The latest trends demonstrate that many countries continue to miss far too many children,” UNICEF chief Catherine Russell said in a joint statement. In fact, 2.7 million additional children remained un- or under-vaccinated last year compared to the pre-pandemic levels in 2019, the organisations found.

“We are off track,” World Health Organization vaccine chief Kate O’Brien told reporters.

“Global immunisation coverage has yet to fully recover from the historic backsliding that we saw during the course of the pandemic.”

Not only has progress stalled, but the number of so-called zero-dose children, who have not received a single jab, rose to 14.5 million last year from 13.9 million in 2022 and from 12.8 million in 2019, according to the data published Monday.