Disruptions in routine childhood vaccinations during the Covid-19 pandemic have undone years of gains in South Asia, a UN agency said on Thursday amid estimates that show India had three million “zero-dose” children in 2020 the highest in the world.
India, which also had the largest count of partially protected children 3.5 million, or a 66 per cent increase over the previous year is among 10 countries that accounted for 62 per cent of under-vaccinated children worldwide, Unicef said.
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About 25 million children are born in India every year.
Most countries in South Asia experienced drop in childhood vaccination rates with the rates for the three full doses against diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP3) falling by 9 percentage points in Nepal, 7 percentage points in Pakistan and 6 percentage points in India.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has diverted parents attention away from other potentially severe infectious diseases, and vaccine hesitancy has risen, resulting in delayed childhood vaccinations for measles especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) but also in the United States, two new studies have found.
Proven vaccine, preventable deaths
The first study, published yesterday in
Nature by a team led by researchers from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, assessed measles vaccinations in 101 LMICs through 2019. They found that, while substantial progress was made in immunizing children against measles from 2000 to 2010, efforts stalled in the last decade in LMICs.
Research Press Release
Nature
December 17, 2020
Measles vaccine coverage decreased in more than half of districts in low- and middle-income countries between 2010 and 2019, according to a paper published in
Nature. This decline may have contributed to more than 17 million measles cases and 83,400 deaths in children under 5 years old in 2017.
The safe, highly effective measles vaccine has been recommended globally since 1974, yet in 2017 there were a record number of measles cases and deaths in children. Although high-income locations, such as the United States and Europe, have recently begun to experience extended measles outbreaks, over 99% of cases occurred in low- and middle-income countries. Globally comparable, annual, local estimates of routine first-dose measles-containing vaccine coverage are critical for understanding geographically precise immunity patterns, progress toward Global Vaccine Action Plan targets, and high-risk areas amidst COVID-19-related disruption of v