Measles vaccination coverage has been declining worldwide since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a situation that puts nearly 40 million children at risk, warns a joint report by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) released Wednesday evening.
Some 40 million children missed a dose of measles vaccine in 2021 – the first dose for 25 million of them, and the second for 14.7 million, the report said, adding that the global rate of vaccination coverage for the first dose is thus at its lowest since 2008.
According to the two organizations, this decline constitutes a significant setback in global progress towards measles elimination and leaves millions of children at risk of infection.
“Behind every statistic in this report is a child at risk of a preventable disease,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a UN statement released Thursday.
In addition, the report estimates the number of cases worldwide at nine million in 2021, including 128,000 deaths. That same year, nearly 61 million doses of measles vaccine were postponed or missed in 18 countries, including Nigeria, India, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Indonesia.