By Kathleen Adams and Maryanne Murray Buechner
UNICEF renewed its commitment to making sure each and every child is vaccinated with Thursday’s release of its 2023 State of the World’s Children (SOWC) Report, which calls on governments to act urgently to scale up declining immunization services and sets a new trap. and the recovery crusade to help them do so.
Immunization policy has been drastically scaled back during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving millions of children more unprotected against some of the most serious diseases of the formative years, according to the report. However, the deteriorating situation doesn’t just reflect pandemic-related disruptions to physical care number one. services; The decline in immunization is also the result of conflict, fragility and extreme weather conditions in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Somalia, Ukraine and other countries, the report says.
While there have been some early symptoms of recovery in immunization from the formative years in several countries in 2022, the report notes, urgent action is needed to regain lost ground. The report’s co-authors wrote, “Catch-up and recovery are urgently needed to vaccinate lost youth and avoid further setbacks. “
Policy gaps that particularly increase the threat of deadly disease outbreaks; 95% of a network will need to be immunized to achieve herd immunity. According to the report, some 67 million children were totally or partially disadvantaged from the immunization regimen between 2019 and 2021, and 48 million of them were absolutely disadvantaged from immunization.
“The State of the World’s Children 2023: Vaccinating Every Children” provides in-depth research of knowledge and provides guidance on what countries can do in the long term to develop policies and close harmful immunity gaps. Read the full report.
The global policy of the third dose of diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine (DTP3), the indicator of immunization policy, since it is very likely that those who won it have won all other vaccines in the regimen, fell five percentage points, from 86%. in 2019 to 81% in 2021, the lowest point since 2008.
In 112 countries, DTP3 policy has stagnated or declined since 2019, and 62 of those countries have missed at least five problems, according to WHO/UNICEF estimates.
The result: 2five million children were unvaccinated, or insufficiently immunized, in 2021, of whom 18 million received no vaccine doses at all, a buildup in the number of zero-dose children of five million in just two years.
The challenge of succeeding in these young people will be considerable. While some will eventually be vaccinated through refresher campaigns, most will not get full vaccination and some will get none. vaccination programs, according to the report.
In Jordan, a rural municipality in Doti district in western Nepal, fitness worker Basanta Malla attends a network awareness consultation to vaccinate young people as part of a UNICEF-supported regimen immunization programme.
According to UNICEF and WHO, 60% of young people are unvaccinated or under-vaccinated in just 10 countries: India, Nigeria, Indonesia, Ethiopia, the Philippines, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Brazil, Pakistan, Angola and Myanmar.
UNICEF will continue to focus its immunization work, together with the government and other partners, in these and other low- and middle-income countries where the dangers are greatest and where fitness systems also want to scale up the delivery of immunization services.
Immunization is one of humanity’s greatest public health achievements, one of the greatest successes and one of the most cost-effective interventions.
It is the first line of defense against a variety of diseases: measles, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, tuberculosis, hepatitis, influenza, polio, yellow fever, dengue, cervical cancer. It can cope with pneumonia, which kills more than 700,000 children a year. It can prevent diarrhoea, which kills more than 484,000 people a year.
It only saves about 4. 4 million lives a year. It also improves the fitness and wealth of Americans and communities. This helps young people only survive, but also thrive.
A grandmother brings her 9-month-old granddaughter, Hareem, to be vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella at Qureshi Nagar Health Camp in Kurla, Mumbai, India.
In the longer term, protecting young people from disease can result in massive savings in fitness expenses and societies and economies can expand human capital and productivity.
The strength of vaccination has been demonstrated in the COVID-19 pandemic. The immediate progression of COVID-19 vaccines and their immediate application have had a staggering global impact: at least two-thirds of the world’s population has been immunized against COVID-19, preventing approximately 20 million deaths worldwide. UNICEF played a leading role in what was the largest vaccine source operation in history, purchasing and delivering approximately two billion doses of vaccine to 146 countries and territories.
But while the COVID-19 vaccination effort is a great success, the pandemic has caused a serious setback in the regimen’s vaccines that protect children against other diseases. Immunizations had already stalled in recent years, stifled by conflict, climate change and misinformation; the spread of COVID-19 has only made things worse, ending 3 decades of progress.
UNICEF estimates that 67 million children did not receive the vaccination regimen against measles, polio and other preventable diseases between 2019 and 2021, contributing to an increasing number of measles, polio, diphtheria and yellow fever outbreaks and thousands of deaths.
On 25 April 2022, in Lilongwe, Malawi, a government gym administers the polio vaccine to 3-year-old Maria as part of a door-to-door vaccination campaign supported by UNICEF.
Whether young people are vaccinated or not is the result of deep inequalities: between rich and poor, between men and women, between communities at the center of the force and communities on the margins.
Children from marginalized communities living in remote rural areas, urban slums, outlying urban settlements, crisis-affected areas, and immigrant and refugee communities are among those least likely to be vaccinated. They face socio-economic barriers to immunization on one basis: poverty, sexual and ethnic marginalization, conflict, crisis and displacement.
The disastrous effects of climate substitution (droughts and floods, displacement and migration, lack of confidence in food) continue to interfere with immunization in the formative years. Misinformation and misinformation about vaccines and vaccine hesitancy remain factors.
All of those barriers will have to be overcome to build access and adoption.
The 2030 Agenda for Immunization, developed through the World Health Organization (WHO) and supported by UNICEF and other partners, aims to halve the number of young people without vaccines and achieve a 90% policy of life-saving vaccines. The plan also aims to introduce 500 new vaccines in low- and middle-income countries.
If the program is met, around 50 million lives will be saved by 2030. UNICEF is implementing the plan with WHO and other partners to ensure that each and every child is vaccinated.
On June 30, 2022, on Kerayaan Island in Kobabaru District, South Kalimantan Province, Indonesia, Irmawati, left, Elsayanti, center, and Dela, 8, second grade, wait their turn to get vaccinated at their number one school.
UNICEF’s global strategy to develop an immunization policy aims for a world in which everyone, everywhere, at all ages, fully benefits from vaccines for fitness and well-being.
The solution aims to:
A nurse-midwife nursing assistant administers a dose of vitamin A to 9-month-old Jivika with her grandmother in India. Jivika won one dose of the measles and rubella vaccine.
Immunization accessibility, availability, affordability, and confidence are critical points for parents and caregivers to vaccinate their children. Achieving the goal of immunizing each and every child will require the commitment of governments and individuals.
The COVID-19 pandemic has provided useful lessons on how to get immunized, according to UNICEF’s SOWC report, but without global, national and local political will, young people will be left unprotected.
Climate change and other barriers to immunization exacerbate infectious diseases and increase the risk of children’s exposure. Failing to vaccinate children violates their right to what the Convention on the Rights of the Child describes as “the enjoyment of possible public health. “
As the world’s largest organization for children and the world’s largest vaccine provider, UNICEF has a unique attitude on how to vaccinate children: 45 percent of children under five in more than a hundred countries a year.
But in a post-COVID world, global monetary pressures make it important to prioritize investments in vaccines to make up lost ground. Donor contributions remain central to the good fortune of life-saving immunization efforts.
Supporting UNICEF’s immunization schedules not only provides a life-saving shield for today’s children; It is helping to protect young people in the future, through innovations in the overall delivery of number one physical care services. While helping to meet the physical health needs of young people, UNICEF is also running to help governments with their physical health systems, making them stronger, more effective and sustainable. and progressively less dependent on donor support.
“Achieving our purpose, immunizing each and every child, will require a genuine commitment from governments,” the authors of the SOWC report wrote. “Part of this substitution will be technical: making greater use of data, improving communication and awareness, and strengthening bloodless chains. Some will require difficult conversations about funding and difficult offsets, aggregating through national governments, donors and others, about how to better fund physical care and number one immunization and how to make them more resilient to long-term impacts.
“And some will force societies and communities to read about their core values. “
Help UNICEF drive global efforts to provide vulnerable young people with vital coverage against vaccine-preventable diseases. Your contribution can help UNICEF and its partners ensure that each and every child is vaccinated. Make a donation.