The child vaccination coverage that saves life has stagnated in recent decades, leaving millions of children at risk of fatal diseases with Pakistan who has the greatest number of children with zero doses in southern Asia after India, according to a new study by British Medical Journal Lancet.
The lancet It is a weekly medical magazine reviewed by 200 years of the United Kingdom. Since its launch, the Journal has expanded to a family of more than 20 specialized magazines and has established several Global Lancet commissions on various important issues in medicine and medical care.
In a press release issued a day ago, the Journal said that since its inception in 1974, the essential immunization program (EPI) of the World Health Organization achieved an “unprecedented progress”, avoiding the death of approximately 154 million children worldwide through the vaccination of routine childhood.
However, he said that, according to a new important analysis of the collaborators of coverage of the vaccine against the study of the global load of the disease, despite the progress of the last 50 years, the last two decades have also been marked by the infant vaccination rates and a wide variation in vaccine coverage.
“These challenges have been exacerbated by Covid-19 pandemia, leaving millions of children vulnerable to preventable diseases and death.”
The authors of the study, entitled: “Global, regional and national trends in the child vaccination coverage of routine from 1980 to 2023 with forecasts by 2030: a systematic analysis for the study of the global load of disease 2023,” he said that the latest estimates should be taken as a “clear warning” that global immunization by 2030 would not be achieved without “transformative improvements in capital.”
In 2019, the WHO established ambitious objectives to improve vaccine coverage worldwide through the 2030 immunization agenda.
According to the data of 2023, on which the analysis is based, more than half of the 15.7 million unvaccinated children in the world lived in only eight countries, with 53 percent in sub -Saharan Africa and 13 percent in southern Asia.
“Despite the monumental efforts of the last 50 years, progress has been far from universal. The large number of children remains low and not vaccinated,” said the author of Senior study, Dr. Jonathan Mosser of the Institute of Metrics and Health Evaluation of the University of Washington (IHME).
The Journal said that the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the challenges with the global coverage rates of the original vaccines recommended by EPI that decrease sharply in 2020, which results in an estimated 15.6 million children who lose the three complete doses of the vaccines of the diphtheria-tanus pertussis or a vaccine between 2020 and 2023 15.9. 9.18m Losing the tuberculosis vaccine.
“The COVID-19 pandemia also reversed the previous profits to reduce the number of zero-dose children not vaccinated worldwide, which reached its maximum point at 18.6 m before falling to 15.7 m by 2023. The study estimates that interruptions in immunization services during the first Pandem Pandemic (202023).
He stressed that the “accelerated progress” would be necessary to achieve the 2030 objective to reduce the number of children in zero doses compared to the 2019 levels, with only 18 of 204 countries and territories that are already estimated to have already met this goal from 2023.
He added that the population’s pressures would also add a “double burden to overloaded health systems that are poorly equipped to handle the substantial growth of the vacuum target populations.”
The study authors requested more concerted efforts to address erroneous information and vaccines to increase the acceptance and absorption of vaccines.
Pakistan situation
The study also found that Pakistan had the largest number of children with zero doses of vaccines after India in southern Asia, with 419,000 children who fell in that category.
“A growing number of wild -type polyomyelitis in Pakistan and Afghanistan have been informed,” said the press release.
Last month, the Pakistan Polio Program launched the third impulse of the year against paralyzing disease at the National Emergency Operations Center.
Pakistan is one of the last two countries in the world, along with Afghanistan, where polyomyelitis remains endemic. Despite global efforts to eradicate virus, challenges such as safety problems, vaccine vaccine and erroneous information have slowed progress.
In April, in an attempt to support routine vaccination, UNICEF delivered 31 trucks refrigerated to the Federal Directorate of Immunization, with the support of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
