More than 25 million children did not receive a life-saving vaccine last year.
As a result, vaccination rates for children fell again in 2021 and were even worse than in the two previous years, as data from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) show.
The situation is dramatic and worse than it has been in 30 years, UNICEF and WHO said in a joint statement.
According to this, the percentage of children who were vaccinated at least once with the so-called DTP vaccine, a combination vaccine that leads to primary immunization against three infectious diseases – diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough (pertussis) – fell by five points to 81 between 2019 and 2021 percent back.
Peter Philipp Schmitt
Editor in the department "Germany and the World".
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There are many reasons why 25 million children were not immunized with DTP last year, a good 22 million in 2020 and around 19 million in 2019: More and more children are living in crisis and conflict regions where vaccination is not possible, and more and more children are being vaccinated Untruths about vaccinations are being spread more and more often, and the corona pandemic has also played a role in the past two years, for example because the vaccine supply chains were interrupted.
There have also been setbacks in other vaccination programs, such as against the human papilloma virus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer.
Most of the children affected lived in low- and middle-income countries, including India, Nigeria, Indonesia, Ethiopia and the Philippines, as well as Myanmar and Mozambique, according to UNICEF and WHO.
Since many children are currently suffering from hunger and therefore already have a weakened immune system, their situation is made even worse by possible infections.
"We are seeing a steady and ongoing deterioration in child immunization," said UNICEF Director-General Catherine Russell.
The consequence of this is that soon many children die.