Immunization of children around the world, which fell during the Covid-19 pandemic, is starting to recover but remains below the level before the health crisis, the UN said on Tuesday.
“This is good news. On average, countries around the world are recovering and approaching the level of immunization they had reached before the pandemic hit,” the director of the department of immunization and vaccines, Kate O, told the WHO. ‘Brien.
“These data are encouraging”
According to the WHO and the United Nations Children’s Fund, there were four million more children vaccinated in 2022 than in 2021.
“These data are encouraging,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
In 2022, 20.5 million children did not receive one or more basic vaccines, up from 24.4 million in 2021. Despite these “promising signs”, coverage is still not reaching pre-pandemic levels (18, 4 million), which, according to the UN agencies, puts children at serious risk of epidemics.
And “the recovery is very uneven,” Kate O’Brien noted. Rich countries are doing relatively well, and the WHO has also found that “some countries, especially some very large low- to middle-income countries, such as India and Indonesia,” have experienced a very strong recovery, she said.
country differences
He explained that the countries that see their vaccination coverage recover are generally those that invested in these programs on a regular basis before the pandemic, also citing Nepal, Kenya and Bangladesh.
On the other hand, “in all low-income countries, recovery has only just begun, if it exists at all in some of these countries,” said Kate O’Brien.
In general, one of the main concerns continues to be vaccination against measles, which has not recovered as well as other vaccines. Coverage of the first dose of the vaccine increased to 83% in 2022, from 81% in 2021, but remains below the 86% reached in 2019.
In contrast, human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination coverage exceeded pre-pandemic levels for the first time last year.
Source: BFM TV
