By Asmau Ahmad
A United Nations led global immunization strategy was unveiled to reach more than 50 million children who have missed life-saving jabs against diseases such as measles, yellow fever and diphtheria, in large part because of COVID-19 disruption.
The Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Henrietta Fore said even before the pandemic, there were worrying signs that countries were beginning to lose ground in the fight against preventable child illnesses.
“Especially with 20 million children already missing out on critical vaccinations,” said Henrietta Fore.
A UN statement quoted UNICEF as saying disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020 meant that vaccine deliveries fell from 2.29 billion in 2019, to just over two billion vaccine doses in 2020.
“The pandemic has made a bad situation worse, causing millions more children to go unimmunized. Now that vaccines are at the forefront of everyone’s minds, we must sustain this energy to help every child catch up on their measles, polio and other vaccines. We have no time to waste. Lost ground means lost lives.”
On his part, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, along with partner GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, urged universal access to immunization and far greater investment in primary health care to support mass jab drives.
“Vaccines will help us end the COVID-19 pandemic but only if we ensure fair access for all countries, and build strong systems to deliver them,” he said.
According to the UN health agency, immunization services have started to recover from the disruption caused by COVID-19 restrictions in 2020.
But a WHO survey indicated that more than one-third of respondent countries still report problems delivering routine jabs.
The statement said today, 60 lifesaving mass vaccination campaigns have been postponed in 50 countries, putting around 228 million people – mostly children – at risk for diseases such as measles, yellow fever and polio, WHO warned.
More than half of the 50 affected countries are in Africa, while measles campaigns have seen most disruption, accounting for 23 postponed vaccination drives, affecting an estimated 140 million people.
“Many of these (measles) campaigns have been delayed for over a year, WHO noted, warning that failure to protect against this highly contagious disease risks large outbreaks wherever people are unvaccinated.
Serious measles outbreaks have already been reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan and Yemen as a result of gaps in vaccination coverage, WHO said, at the start of World Immunization Week 2021.
These outbreaks are happening in places already grappling with conflict situations as well as service disruptions due to ongoing response measures to COVID-19, it added.
