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ACCRA, Ghana – Widespread outbreaks of diseases that commonly kill children are spreading around the world, a grim legacy of fitness formulas disrupting the COVID-19 pandemic that left more than 60 million children without a single dose of popular childhood vaccines.
By the middle of this year, 47 countries were reporting severe measles outbreaks, up from 16 countries in June 2020. Nigeria is recently facing the largest diphtheria outbreak in its history, with more than 17,000 suspected cases and nearly six hundred deaths to date. Many countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, are reporting the flow of the polio virus.
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Many young people who have not been vaccinated are no longer benefiting from vaccination programs. “Undosed youth” account for nearly a share of all child deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases, according to Gavi, the organization that helps fund immunization in low- and middle-income countries.
As a result of the pandemic, another 85 million children are underimmunized, meaning they have received only part of the popular multi-shot medication needed to be fully protected against a component disease.
The accusation of failing to achieve these young people becomes apparent temporarily. Measles deaths rose 43% (to 136,200) in 2022 from last year, according to a new report from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2023 means the total could be twice as high.
“The decline in immunization policy due to the COVID-19 pandemic has led us directly to this scenario of higher numbers of childhood illnesses and deaths,” said Ephrem Lemango, Associate Director for Immunization at UNICEF, which supports the provision of vaccines to nearly a portion of the world’s population. children every year. . . « With each new outbreak, the death toll in vulnerable communities increases. We want to act fast now and make the necessary investments to catch up with children who have been left out of the pandemic.
One of the most challenging situations is that young people who did not receive their first vaccine between 2020 and 2022 are now older than the age diversity observed in major fitness centers and in general vaccination programs. Proving fatal in countries with extremely fragile fitness systems will require greater efforts and new investments.
“If you were born within a certain era of time, you’ve been forgotten, era, and you won’t be stuck simply restoring mainstream services,” said Lily Caprani, UNICEF’s chief of global advocacy.
UNICEF is asking Gavi for $350 million to buy vaccines to test them and reach these children. Gavi’s Board will submit the application next month.
UNICEF is urging countries to launch a catch-up vaccination campaign, an exceptional and unique programme to succeed in all children between the ages of 1 and 4 who have not been vaccinated.
Many emerging countries delight in carrying out measles recovery campaigns, targeting children between the ages of 1 and five, or even between the ages of 1 and 15, in reaction to outbreaks. They will also deliver the other vaccines and to staff who exercise (regularly connect fitness staff who are only used to vaccinating young children) and procure and distribute the vaccines themselves.
Lemango said that despite the urgency of the situation, it had been difficult to put plans in place for such campaigns and that he expected the maximum to be combined in 2024.
“Coming out of the pandemic, there is a hangover; no one wanted to campaign,” he said. “Everyone needs to get back to normal and increase vaccination as normal. But we have already had some notable cases.
In some countries, such as Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia, fitness systems have recovered from the severe disruptions caused by the pandemic and returned to, or even exceeded, pre-pandemic levels of immunization coverage. But in others, for countries with the peak component – where immunization rates were already particularly below UNICEF targets – they have not maintained their declining levels in the past.
The countries with the highest number of young people without doses are Nigeria, Ethiopia, India, Congo and Pakistan. Many of those with the lowest degrees of politics face complex challenges, such as the civil conflicts in Syria, Ethiopia, and Yemen; the developing population of climate refugees in Chad; and those two disorders in Sudan.
Ghana’s experience is representative of the difficult situations facing many low-income countries. Parents couldn’t take their children to get vaccinated when communities were closed against COVID, and when those restrictions were lifted, many parents stayed away for fear of infection, said Priscilla Obiri, a fitness nurse with the vaccination rate network. . in low-income fishing communities on the outskirts of the capital, Accra.
Of the young people Obiri sees those days at a typical pop-up vaccination clinic, where he sets up a table and a few chairs in the shade at a crossroads, up to a third will have incomplete or no vaccinations, he says. . They agree on a plan with their moms to bridge the gap.
But some parents don’t want to or can’t take their children to a clinic. “We want to swoon on the net and scare them away,” he said.
As Obiri and his colleagues try to make up lost ground, they face a challenge: Misinformation campaigns and COVID vaccine hesitancy have spread and eroded some of the classic enthusiasm of parents to vaccinate their children regularly, according to the Vaccine Confidence Project, a long process. – Permanent study initiative of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“Across 55 countries, there was a sharp drop between 2015 and 2022 in the number of people saying the vaccination regimen is vital for children,” said mission director Heidi Larson, whose team compiled what she described as “robust data from a global survey. “of one hundred nationally representative surveys.
While other people around the world were looking for data on vaccines, there was an increase in erroneous and erroneous data, he said, and other people with little acceptance in government and official rules likely opted for data sources.
In 2015, 95% of Ghanaians said they believed vaccines were safe. This figure fell to 67% in 2022. It had risen to 83% in October this year.
Dr. Kwame Amponsah-Achiano, who oversees Ghana’s formative years immunization program, said he doesn’t think it has slowed down during the COVID pandemic. Demand remains high and has outstripped the program’s origination capacity in some areas, he said.
Caprani said UNICEF has discovered that the two disorders run parallel.
“You can have demand that exceeds not only physical supply, but also faster (convenient, affordable, affordable) and at the same time see some decline in confidence,” he said. “They’re not necessarily the same people. “
Last year, 22 million children did not receive the routine measles vaccine in their first year of life (2. 7 million more than in 2019), while another 13. 3 million did not receive their second dose. To achieve herd immunity and prevent outbreaks, 95% of children want to get either dose. Measles acts as an early precautionary formula for immunization gaps because it is highly transmissible.
“There are communities where a measles outbreak is a bad thing and others where it’s a death sentence, due to the combination of other threat points like poor malnutrition, lack of physical care, and lack of clean water,” Caprani says.
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