By Milan Sharma: The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef), India released a global flagship report titled ‘The State of the World’s Children 2023: For Every Child, Vaccination’ on Thursday, highlighting the significance of immunisation in children.
According to new data from the vaccine confidence project, published by Unicef, the popular perception of the importance of vaccines for children has held firm or improved only in three countries, namely, China, India, and Mexico, out of 55 countries studied.
Vaccination confidence has declined in more than a third of the nations studied, including the Republic of Korea, Papua New Guinea, Ghana, Senegal, and Japan since the Covid-19 pandemic began. The research highlights the growing potential of vaccine hesitancy due to factors like access to misleading information and declining trust in vaccine efficacy.
The global drop in vaccine confidence coincides with the highest persistent drop in child immunisation in 30 years, fuelled by the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic halted vaccinations in children practically everywhere. This was due to the high demand on health systems, the shift of immunisation resources to Covid-19 vaccines, shortages in health workers, and stay-at-home measures.
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“The state of the world’s children 2023 report highlights India as one of the countries with the highest vaccine confidence in the world,” said Unicef India Representative Cynthia McCaffrey.
“This is a recognition of the Government of India’s political and social commitment and demonstrates that the largest vaccines drive during the pandemic has paid off in building confidence and strengthening systems for routine immunisation to vaccinate every child,” added Cynthia McCaffrey.
The report warns a total of 67 million children missed out on vaccinations between 2019 and 2021, with vaccination coverage levels decreasing in 112 countries. In 2022, for example, the number of measles cases was more than double the total in the previous year. The number of children paralysed by polio was up 16 per cent year-on-year in 2022. When comparing the 2019 to 2021 period with the previous three-year period, there was an eight-fold increase in the number of children paralysed by polio, highlighting the need to ensure vaccination efforts are sustained.
Despite an increase in the number of zero-dose (unreached or missed out) children to three million – between 2020 and 2021 – during the pandemic, India was able to arrest the backslide and bring down the number to 2.7 million, according to Vivek Virendra Singh, a health specialist at Unicef.
This achievement can be attributed to the government’s sustained evidence-based catch-up campaigns, including the Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI), the continued provision of comprehensive primary healthcare services, a strong routine immunisation programme, and dedicated health workers.
The pandemic also worsened existing inequities. Vaccination was still not available, accessible, or affordable for far too many children, particularly in the most marginalised areas. Even before the pandemic, vaccination progress had stalled for about a decade as the world struggled to reach the most marginalised children.
According to new data from the International Centre for Equity in Health, one in every five children in the poorest households is zero-dose, whereas just one in every twenty in the wealthiest. It revealed that unvaccinated children mostly live in hard-to-reach populations such as the rural areas or urban slums. Their mothers mostly couldn’t attend school or have little say in family matters.
The majority of these problems are found in countries with low or middle incomes, where one in 10 urban children and one in six rural children are zero-dose recipients. There is hardly any difference between children in urban and rural areas in upper-middle-income countries, highlighted the report.
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“Immunisation is one of humanity’s most remarkable success stories, allowing children to live healthy lives and contribute to society. Reaching the last child with immunisation is a key marker of equity that benefits not only the child, but also the whole community,” said Cynthia McCaffrey.
Routine immunisations and strong health systems can best prepare us in preventing future pandemics and reducing morbidity and mortality, added McCaffrey.
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