UN and WHO Report: India sees number of children missing vaccines drop to 16 lakh
This is a poor performance compared to the 95% coverage recorded in the previous year, 2019.
In the 2023 UN and WHO Report, India had the second-highest number of unvaccinated children, with nearly 1.6 million not receiving any vaccines. Nigeria had the most, with 2.1 million zero-dose children. Despite this, India’s situation improved compared to 2021, when it had the highest number of unvaccinated children globally, totalling 2.73 million.
New statistics shared by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF on Monday show that Nigeria most notably reported the highest number of zero-dose children in 2023, which was 2.1 million. The position is then succeeded by the following countries: India, Ethiopia, Congo, Sudan, and Indonesia. China ranks 18th among the top 20 countries in the world with the maximum number of children with zero dose; on the other hand, Pakistan stands 10th.
WHO’s Urgent Call for Enhanced Vaccination Efforts
Under the framework of the Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030), twenty countries were selected according to the number of zero-dose children in 2021. In the three years from 2021 to 2023, India has accounted for 1,592,000 of the zero-dose children out of the eight countries in the ROSA region.
On Tuesday, the World Health Organization urged countries in the South-East Asia Region to enhance their efforts at every level and adopt targeted approaches at sub-national levels to identify and vaccinate children who are unvaccinated or under-vaccinated.
“The increasing numbers of unvaccinated and undervaccinated children call for urgent and accelerated action. We need to identify where and why these children are missing and prioritize reaching them at the earliest.
“No child should fall sick or die of any vaccine-preventable disease when safe and effective vaccines exist to protect them against these deadly diseases,” stated Ms. Saima Wazed, Regional Director of WHO South-East Asia.
She also noted that the region is not ready to achieve the set immunization goals for the year 2030. Despite existing vaccination programs, India in 2023 recorded the third largest number of children, nearly 16 lakh, who never received their first measles-containing vaccine (MCV1). The first dose of the measles-containing vaccine MCV1, which is administered at nine or twelve months of age according to the national immunization calendar, was reduced to 93 percent. This is a poor performance compared to the 95% coverage recorded in the previous year, 2019.
In 2023, 1,592,000 lakh children in India did not receive their first routine measles vaccine dose. The second dose of measles vaccine (MCV2), typically given to children aged between 18 months and five years, maintained a steady coverage rate of 90 percent throughout the year.
In the same year, India achieved 93 percent in the first dose of the measles-containing vaccine (MCV1), meaning it has gone 10 percentage points above the overall global average of 83 percent, let alone the average of all the ROSA countries, which stands at 90 percent. On the other hand, MC, commonly administered to children aged between 18 months and 5 years, was maintained at 90 percent for the second dose (MCV2) for the entire year.
As demonstrated by the most recent estimations by the WHO and UNICEF based on the WUENIC, there is still a strong need to focus on missed opportunities for their improvement, the importance of addressing the need for recovery in many countries, and the need to develop immunization systems on a large scale. With this dataset, WHO and partner organizations offer the largest and most detailed global source of immunization coverage trends over 14 diseases, which seeks to stress the importance of maintaining continuous and vigorous excitement in achieving universal coverage and strengthening health systems.
Catherine Russell, the UNICEF Executive Director, said, “The latest trends demonstrate that many countries continue to miss far too many children.” Further adding, “Closing the immunization gap requires a global effort, with governments, partners, and local leaders investing in primary healthcare and community workers to ensure every child gets vaccinated and that overall healthcare is strengthened.”
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