Between 2019 and 2021, 67 million children were deprived at least partially of life-saving, often compulsory vaccines, putting a brake on “more than a decade of progress in terms of routine childhood immunizations” alarms l ‘agency. And France is not spared, since confidence in vaccination has fallen by 11% in three years.
On the occasion of World Vaccination Week, which begins on Monday, UNICEF is concerned about the sharp decline in vaccination of children aged three and under. The childhood vaccination rate worldwide has thus fallen by five percentage points between 2019 and 2021, reaching 81%, a level not seen since 2008. In France, this concerns 82,000 children, deprived of at least one compulsory vaccine.
Measles cases more than doubled in 2022
Worse, between 2019 and 2021, UNICEF estimates that 21,000 children have received no dose. This can be explained, among other things, by the distrust of vaccination since the start of the pandemic, or even by the lack of access to healthcare in certain rural areas. For Catherine Grosjean, France manager of Unicef, it is urgent to make up for the accumulated delays.
“What we saw in 2022, for example, is that the number of measles cases globally more than doubled compared to 2021, so the effect was very rapid of this drop in vaccination. These are diseases that sometimes have serious consequences, sequelae that remain for life. So this childhood vaccination is fundamental to avoid epidemics on a global scale”, she believes.
Every year vaccination saves more than four million children worldwide. Nearly three million additional children could be protected by 2030. This would require halving the number of unvaccinated infants.
Source: Europe1
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