<div><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>Some 67 million children partially or fully missed routine vaccines globally between 2019 and 2021 because of lockdowns and health care disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the United Nations said Wednesday.</b></span><br></div><div><br></div><div>"More than a decade of hard-earned gains in routine childhood immunization have been eroded," read a new report from the UN's children's agency, UNICEF, adding that getting back on track "will be challenging."</div><div><br></div><div>Of the 67 million children whose vaccinations were "severely disrupted," 48 million missed out on routine vaccines entirely, UNICEF said, flagging concerns about potential polio and measles outbreaks.</div><div><br></div><div>Vaccine coverage among children declined in 112 countries and the percent of children vaccinated worldwide slipped 5 points to 81 percent -- a low not seen since 2008. Africa and South Asia were particularly hard hit.</div><div><br></div><div>"Worryingly, the backsliding during the pandemic came at the end of a decade when, in broad terms, growth in childhood immunization had stagnated," the report said.</div><div><br></div><div>Vaccines save 4.4 million lives each year, a number the United Nations figures could jump to 5.8 million by 2030 if its ambitious targets to leave "no one behind" are met.</div><div><br></div><div>"Vaccines have played a really important role in allowing more children to live healthy, long lives," Brian Keeley, the report's editor in chief, told AFP. "Any decline at all in vaccination rates is worrying."</div><div><br></div><div>Before the introduction of a vaccine in 1963, measles killed approximately 2.6 million people each year, mostly children. By 2021, that number had fallen to 128,000.</div><div><br></div><div>But between 2019 and 2021, the percentage of children vaccinated against measles fell from 86 percent to 81 percent, and the number of cases in 2022 doubled compared to 2021.</div><div>- Declining vaccine confidence -</div><div><br></div><div>The slide in vaccination rates could be compounded by other crises, Keeley warned, from climate change to food insecurity.</div><div><br></div><div>"You've got increasing number of conflicts, economic stagnation in a lot of countries, climate emergencies, and so on," he said. "This all sort of makes it harder and harder for health systems and countries to meet vaccination needs."</div><div><br></div><div>UNICEF called on governments "to double-down on their commitment to increase financing for immunization" with special attention on accelerating "catch-up" vaccination efforts for those who missed their shots.</div><div><br></div><div>The report also raised concerns about a drop in people's confidence in vaccines, seen in 52 out of 55 countries surveyed.</div><div><br></div><div>"We cannot allow confidence in routine immunizations to become another victim of the pandemic," Catherine Russell, UNICEF's executive director, said in a statement. "Otherwise, the next wave of deaths could be of more children with measles, diphtheria or other preventable diseases."</div><div><br></div><div>Vaccine confidence can be "volatile and time specific," the report said, noting that "further analysis will be required to determine if the findings are indicative of a longer-term trend" beyond the pandemic.</div><div><br></div><div>Overall, it said that support for vaccines "remains relatively strong."</div><div><br></div><div>In about half of the 55 countries surveyed, more than 80 percent of respondents "perceived vaccines as important for children."</div><div><br></div><div>"There is reason to be somewhat hopeful that services are recovering in quite a few countries," said Keeley, who added that preliminary vaccination data from 2022 showed encouraging signs.</div><div><br></div><div>But even getting numbers back up to pre-pandemic levels will take years, he said, not including reaching "the children who were missing before the pandemic."</div><div><br></div><div>"And they are not an insubstantial number." - AFP</div>