Global children’s vaccination levels have stabilized after reducing during the COVID crisis, the UN said Tuesday, but warned that erroneous information and drastic aid cuts were deepening the dangerous coverage gaps and putting millions at risk.
In 2024, 85% of babies worldwide, or 109 million, had received three doses of the diphtheria, tetanus and Ferusis cough (DTP), and the third dose served as a key marker for global immunization coverage, according to data published by UN health and children’s agencies.
That marked an increase of a percentage point and a million children more covered than a year earlier, in what the agencies described as “modest” profits.
At the same time, almost 20 million babies lost at least one of their DTP doses last year, including 14.3 million children called zero doses “who never received a single shot.
Although a slight improvement for 2023, when the United Nations said there were 14.5 million children in zero doses, it was 1.4 million more than in 2019, before the Covid pandemic caused ravages in global vaccination programs.
“The good news is that we have managed to reach more children with vaccines that save lives,” said UNICEF boss, Catherine Russell, in a joint statement.
“But millions of children remain without protection against preventable diseases,” he said.
While lack of access was the main cause of low coverage worldwide, agencies also highlighted the threat of misinformation.
The diminished trust in the “evidence gained with so much effort around vaccine safety” is contributing to dangerous gaps and outbreaks, whom Kate O’Brien told the journalists Kate O’Brien.
Experts have sounded the alarm in the United States, especially, where Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been accused for a long time to spread the wrong information of the vaccine, even about the measles vaccine, even when the United States dealt with its worst measles in 30 years.
Last year, 60 countries experienced large and disruptive outbreaks of highly contagious disease, almost doubleing 33 in 2022, according to the report.
It is estimated that two million more children worldwide were vaccinated against measles in 2024 that the previous year, but the global coverage rate remained well below the 95% necessary to avoid their propagation.
In a positive note, Tuesday’s report showed that the coverage of the vaccine against a variety of diseases had joined last year in the 57 low -income countries backed by the Gavi vaccines alliance.
“In 2024, low -income countries protected more children than ever,” said Gavi’s boss, Sania Nishtar.
But the data also indicated that “sliding signs” arose in medium and high -income countries where coverage had previously been at least 90%.
“Even smaller drops in immunization coverage can have devastating consequences,” O’Brien said.
