The UN warned Thursday that a “perfect storm” was brewing, with a raging pandemic disrupting access to routine vaccinations, leaving millions of children at risk from measles and other deadly diseases.
A full 23 million children missed out on basic childhood vaccines last year, as routine health services were hit worldwide by restrictions aimed at controlling COVID-19 and many parents shunned the clinics that were open for fear of exposure to the virus.
It marks the highest number in over a decade and 3.7 million more than in 2019, according to data published Thursday by the World Health Organization and the UN’s children’s agency UNICEF.
And the sharp decline in routine vaccinations comes as many countries have begun loosening restrictions even as the pandemic is far from over.
This has the potential of not only driving up COVID transmission, but also of allowing otherwise vaccine-preventable diseases to begin spreading.
That is because the restrictions in many countries have until now also provided a buffer protecting unvaccinated children against exposure to childhood diseases.
“In 2021, we have potentially a perfect storm about to happen,” Kate O’Brien, head of the WHO’s vaccines and immunization department, told reporters.
She warned there was now “an accumulation of children who are not immune because they haven’t received vaccines, and more and more transmission because of too early release of public health and social measures.”
“This is the sort of perfect storm we’re ringing the alarm bell about right now,” O’Brien said, stressing WHO’s “high concern about these very outbreak prone diseases.”
“We need to act now in order to protect these children.”
The data published Thursday revealed that rising numbers of children across all regions missed first vital vaccine doses last year while millions more missed later vaccines.
Compared with 2019, at least 3.5 million more children missed their first doses of the three-dose diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine (DTP) while three million more children missed their first measles dose, the data showed. AFP
Even more concerning perhaps, as many as 17 million children, mainly living in conflict-affected communities or in under-serviced remote areas or in informal slum settings, likely did not receive a single vaccine in 2020.
“The COVID-19 pandemic and related disruptions cost us valuable ground we cannot afford to lose,” UNICEF chief Henrietta Fore said in the statement, cautioning that “the consequences will be paid in the lives and wellbeing of the most vulnerable.”
She said even before COVID, “there were worrying signs that we were beginning to lose ground in the fight to immunize children against preventable child illness.”
“The pandemic has made a bad situation worse.”
The UN has warned against sacrificing routine childhood vaccines in the rush to roll out COVID jabs.
“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,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in the statement.
“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.”