Prime Highlights:
- We find in a new study that childhood immunization rates have fallen or stagnated since 2010.
- Disruptions from pandemics, vaccine rejection, and conflict undermine decades of gains in immunization
Key Facts
- We have so far vaccinated more than 4 billion children and already saved 154 million lives since 1974.
- Immunization coverage fell in over 100 countries prior to COVID-19, and kept declining after the year 2020.
- Over 15.7 million children did not receive routine vaccines in the year 2023, and most of them belonged to eight priority nations.
Key Background
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has sounded an alert for child vaccination patterns across the world through a systematic review in The Lancet. In reviewing data from 204 countries between 1980 and 2023, the authors discovered that while the World Health Organization’s Expanded Programme on Immunization, launched in 1974, had initially been a colossally successful affair—boosting global vaccine coverage from below 50% in the early 1980s to around 80%—the last few years have also witnessed stagnation as well as horrific declines.
The report places the number that over 4 billion children have been saved and over 150 million lives have been saved globally by immunization campaigns. But from the previous decade, the progress decelerated. During 2010-2019, almost half of the countries surveyed reported coverage decreasing for one or more of the most essential vaccines: DTP (tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis), measles, polio, or BCG (tuberculosis). This decline was evident even in the high-income countries such as the U.S. and Japan.
COVID-19 made it even worse, damaging health care systems and immunization campaigns significantly. Between 2020 and 2023, millions of children were left behind on critical vaccines: 15.6 million for DTP, 15.9 million for polio, and more than 9 million for BCG. It hit Africa disproportionately hard, as conflict countries such as Sudan were. DTP coverage there fell by close to half because of civil wars.
Vaccine hesitancy is also on the rise. Triggered by misinformation, lack of trust in health agencies, and political polarization, hesitancy has resulted in lower vaccine use even among historically high-compliance countries. Measles and polio outbreaks in various parts of the world—such as the United States, Pakistan, and the UK—are proofs of the consequences of falling immunization.
The deficiencies of WHO’s Immunisation Agenda 2030, viz. vaccinating 90% of children across the world and reducing “zero-dose” children by half, risk 15.7 million children in 2023, the majority residing in Nigeria, India, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Brazil. They demand increased investment in immunization, increased public confidence through open communication, and increased international coordination to prevent losing decades of health progress at the global scale.
