Millions of children deprived of life-saving vaccinations amid COVID pandemic, misinformation surge

(United Nations News) Some 67 million children worldwide missed out on one or more essential vaccinations between 2019 and 2021, due to disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and armed conflict, but also decreasing confidence in vaccines, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Wednesday.

In its State of the World’s Children 2023 report, UNICEF says that vaccination coverage levels decreased in 112 countries during the pandemic, “the largest sustained backslide in childhood immunization in 30 years”. According to the agency, a rise in misleading information on vaccines is one of the factors at play.

UNICEF’s Executive Director Catherine Russell said that while at the height of the pandemic, scientists rapidly developed life-saving vaccines, “despite this historic achievement, fear and disinformation about all types of vaccines circulated as widely as the virus itself”.

Warning signal

UNICEF says the pandemic interrupted childhood vaccination “almost everywhere”, due to stretched health systems and stay-at-home measures. But new data also shows a trend of declining confidence in childhood vaccines of up to 44 percentage points in a number of countries.

“This data is a worrying warning signal,” Ms. Russell insisted. “We cannot allow confidence in routine immunizations to become another victim of the pandemic. Otherwise, the next wave of deaths could be of more children with measles, diphtheria or other preventable diseases.”

Read more at: United Nations News

Source: CARICOM TODAY