Geneva (EFE).- The drop in child vaccination in a hundred countries, due to the emergency situation caused by the covid-19 pandemic, now exposes the world to epidemic outbreaks of easily preventable diseases, the Organization said today World Health Organization (WHO), which has joined other entities to try to reverse this situation.
Between 2019 and 2021, 67 million children did not receive a full vaccination, including 48 million children who have been called “zero doses” because they did not even receive a dose of basic vaccines, including diphtheria-tetanus-cough whooping disease (DTP), according to data collected from the UNICEF World Report on the State of the World’s Children.
In presenting the international campaign “The Great Update” on vaccines, the WHO specified that in 2021 alone, more than 25 million children were missing at least one vaccine, which explains the multiplication of outbreaks of infectious diseases, even in regions of the world where some of these were considered eradicated.
The humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) pointed out today that this represents “a historic setback in childhood immunization” and means that vaccination coverage has gone from 86% to 81% in the reference period.
MSF, which provides relief in countries experiencing the worst humanitarian crises, stressed that 11 million children with insufficient or no vaccinations live in very fragile humanitarian settings, including armed conflicts.
For this reason, he asked the GAVI alliance, which favors access to vaccines in poor countries, “to waive the country co-financing requirement” in order to participate in the “Great Update” campaign.
Strengthen child vaccination in Africa
GAVI, the WHO, Unicef, the Alliance for Vaccines and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are the main promoters of the campaign, which will focus its efforts and resources on some twenty countries where 75% of children are partially vaccinated or not vaccinated, starting with the Africans.
To do this, countries will have to adapt their vaccination policies, admitting a smaller number of doses if necessary -depending on the time elapsed since the recommended vaccination age- or modifying the intervals.
The WHO also proposes using health care centers to identify children who should be vaccinated (when they go to them for other reasons) and will insist that a multidose vial of vaccine must be opened even if there is only one child to be vaccinated .
In some countries, health personnel are instructed not to open a vial in such cases to avoid waste, but the organization believes that the paramount interest is to protect each child and reminds that basic vaccines are often cheap.
The WHO director of immunization, Kate O’Brien, said today that among the pathogens most likely to cause epidemic outbreaks due to low vaccination coverage is, for example, the measles virus, a highly contagious disease, and among which 12 and 18 people can be infected for each case.
Major measles outbreaks in 33 countries
In the last year there have been major outbreaks of measles in 33 countries, fourteen more than in the previous period.
There are also outbreaks of yellow fever – ten in Africa and one in Latin America – caused by a virus that is particularly dangerous when circulating in urban settings, but can be prevented with a vaccine.
O’Brien also mentioned the reduction in immunization against the human papilloma virus – the main cause of cervical cancer – among girls and boys between 9 and 14 years of age. Before the pandemic, coverage had reached 20% in this age category, but it has now fallen to 15%.
The main reason is that during the most acute stage of the pandemic, schools were closed, which was where this vaccine was made available to adolescents in most countries where it is available.