The number of children worldwide getting life-saving vaccinations has declined this year largely because of the coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organization and UNICEF warned on Wednesday.
"Vaccines are one of the most powerful tools in the history of public health, and more children are now being immunised than every before," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus."The avoidable suffering and death caused by children missing out on routine immunisations could be far greater than COVID-19 itself," he said in a statement.
As of this May, the pandemic had disrupted immunization programs in three-quarters of more than 80 nations responding to a UN survey conducted with the US Centres for Disease Control. "We must prevent a further deterioration in vaccine coverage ... before children's lives are threatened by other diseases.Progress on immunization coverage was already stalling before the new coronavirus hit, the UN agencies said.
"The likelihood that a child born today will be fully vaccinated with all the globally recommended vaccines by the time she reaches the age of five is less than 20 per cent," they said in the statement.Two-thirds of them are in 10 countries: Angola, Brazil, DR Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, and The Philippines.
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