ADVERTISEMENTMillions of children are skipping routine vaccinations, and the downward trend could continue in the coming years, according to a new global study.
Over the past half-century, routine immunisations against diseases like measles, polio, and tuberculosis (TB) have saved an estimated 154 million lives, mostly among children under the age of five, according to the report published in The Lancet medical journal.
But both wealthy and developing countries are now backsliding on vaccinations due to healthcare disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of vaccine misinformation, the study found. Experts believe recent cuts to global aid will make the situation worse.
The share of children who got the measles vaccine, for example, dropped in 100 countries between 2010 and 2019, according to the analysis of 11 immunisations across 204 countries and territories.
The consequences can be fatal. Measles outbreaks in Europe and the United States have killed 17 people and sickened thousands of others over the past year.
“More children will be hospitalised, permanently damaged and die from fully preventable diseases if the trend is not reversed,” Andrew Pollard, who leads the Oxford Vaccine Group and was not involved with the new study, said in a statement.
Millions of children went without routine jabs due to COVID-era disruptions between 2020 and 2023, the analysis found.
An estimated 15.6 million children missed a measles jab or the full three doses of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine, while 15.9 million did not get the polio vaccine and 9.18 million missed the TB jab.
By 2023, there were 15.7 million so-called “zero-dose children” who likely had not gotten any vaccines, which is down from 58.8 million in 1980 but an increase from pre-pandemic levels, the study found.
Today, most of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, though the European Union and the United Kingdom are home to more than 165,000 zero-dose children.
Vaccine coverage still falling
While vaccination rates tend to be higher in Europe, they are not immune to these trends.
Since 2010, vaccine coverage has fallen for at least one jab in 21 wealthy countries, including Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.
“The challenge now is how to improve vaccine delivery and uptake in areas of low coverage,” Emily Haeuser, the study’s lead author and a researcher at the US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), said in a statement.
The findings also indicate that key global health targets will likely not be met. Health officials wanted to halve the number of zero-dose children between 2019 and 2030, but only 18 countries had met this threshold by 2023.
Health experts say recent cuts to global health funding could further undermine that goal.
“Around the world, the increasing number of countries torn apart by civil unrest and wars, combined with the drastic cuts in foreign aid from rich nations, such as USA and UK, makes it difficult to get vaccines to many populations,” David Elliman, an honorary associate professor at University College London who was not involved with the study, said in a statement.
Even so, researchers called for renewed investment in immunisation campaigns, as well as targeted efforts to combat vaccine hesitancy and misinformation and initiatives to rebuild public trust in health authorities.
“It is in everyone’s interest that this situation is rectified,” Elliman said. “Not only is it a moral imperative to improve the health of all children [but also] no one is safe until everyone is safe”.
