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The Hindu
4 hours ago
- Health
- The Hindu
India's alarming vaccination gap: 1.44 million children still 'zero-dose,' Lancet study reveals
India is at the forefront of a critical global challenge in childhood vaccinations, with a staggering 1.44 million children classified as 'zero-dose' in 2023, according to a new analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study Vaccine Coverage Collaborators, published in The Lancet, on June 25, 2025. The study also highlights a troubling stagnation in worldwide immunisation efforts, leaving millions of vulnerable children, particularly in India and other South Asian nations, susceptible to deadly, preventable diseases. Despite significant progress in expanding vaccine coverage between 1980 and 2023, the momentum has significantly faltered since 2010, the study found. By 2023, an estimated 15.7 million children globally had received no doses of the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTP) vaccine in their first year of life – with India being a significant contributor to this cohort. Measles vaccination coverage declined in 100 of 204 countries between 2010 and 2019, while 21 of 36 high-income countries experienced declines in coverage for at least one vaccine dose against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, polio, or tuberculosis. More than half of these 15.7 million unvaccinated children reside in just eight countries, with India's 1.44 million zero-dose children placing it as the second-highest globally, behind Nigeria. South Asia as a region account for a substantial 13% of these vulnerable children, emphasising the concentrated nature of this crisis within the subcontinent. Pandemic fall-out The COVID-19 pandemic severely exacerbated existing challenges, leading to sharp declines in global vaccine coverage rates from 2020 onwards. The study estimates that between 2020 and 2023, approximately 15.6 million children worldwide missed their full three doses of the DTP vaccine or a measles vaccine. 'Despite the monumental efforts of the past 50 years, progress has been far from universal. Large numbers of children remain under- and un-vaccinated', said senior study author Jonathan Mosser from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington, United States. 'Routine childhood vaccinations are among the most powerful and cost-effective public health interventions available, but persistent global inequalities, challenges from the COVID pandemic, and the growth of vaccine misinformation and hesitancy have all contributed to faltering immunisation progress. These trends increase the risk of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, including measles, polio, and diphtheria, underscoring the critical need for targeted improvements to ensure that all children can benefit from lifesaving immunisations,' Dr. Mosser added. 2030 goals may remain unmet The authors of the study said that these latest estimates should be taken as a clear warning that global immunisation targets for 2030 will not be met without 'transformational improvements in equity'. The authors strongly advocate for concerted efforts to combat vaccine misinformation and hesitancy, emphasising that 'Vaccination services must prioritise trust-building, engage community leaders, and tailor interventions with more culturally appropriate local strategies to improve vaccine confidence and uptake.' Professor Hai Fang, China Center for Health Development Studies, Peking University, China (not involved with the study) said, 'In light of the potential decline in international aid from high-income countries, there is an even greater need to strengthen routine childhood vaccination coverage at all levels. Sustained investment and targeted strategies will be essential to maintain progress, close immunisation gaps, and ensure equitable access to life-saving vaccines.' What does this mean for India For India, this means intensified efforts are required to reverse the trend. The findings serve as a critical alarm bell for public health authorities, highlighting the urgent need for robust, equitable immunisation strategies to safeguard the country's vast child population against preventable diseases. Experts said that for a country as diverse as India, this calls for highly localised and culturally sensitive vaccination programmes. A significant two-thirds (65%) of the zero-dose children who need to be reached by vaccination between 2023 and 2030 are concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, with the latter accounting for 1.33 million. 'The challenge now is how to improve vaccine delivery and uptake in areas of low coverage. The diversity of challenges and barriers to immunisation vary widely between countries and within communities, with rising numbers of displaced people and growing disparities due to armed conflict, political volatility, economic uncertainty, climate crises, and vaccine misinformation and hesitancy, underscoring the need for new, tailored solutions,' said lead author of the study, Emily Haeuser. The world has made unprecedented progress in vaccinating children against life-threatening disease since World Health Organisation (WHO) established the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) in 1974. Over the past 50 years, EPI has vaccinated more than 4 billion children, preventing the deaths of an estimated 154 million children worldwide and providing a total of 10.2 billion years of full health. However, vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks persist, reflecting long standing inequalities in vaccine coverage worldwide, and pose a growing global risk.
New Indian Express
5 hours ago
- Health
- New Indian Express
India among eight countries with half of world's unvaccinated children as of 2023: Study
NEW DELHI: India was among the eight countries where more than half the unvaccinated children from around the world lived as of 2023, an analysis published in The Lancet journal showed, "emphasising persistent inequities." Providing global estimates of current vaccine coverage, the study found that the same year, there were 15.7 million children -- 1.44 million in India -- who had received no doses of the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis vaccine in their first year. An international team of researchers forming the 'Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2023 Vaccine Coverage Collaborators' updated global, regional, and national estimates of routine childhood vaccine coverage from 1980 to 2023 for 204 countries and territories. In 1980, 53.5 per cent of children who had never received a routine childhood vaccine, or 'zero-dose' children, lived in just five countries -- India, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh --, they said. Routine childhood vaccinations are among the most powerful and cost-effective public health interventions available, said senior author Dr Jonathan Mosser from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington, US, which co-ordinates the GBD study. "Despite the monumental efforts of the past 50 years, progress has been far from universal. Large numbers of children remain under- and un-vaccinated," Dr Mosser said. Persistent global inequalities, challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and growth of vaccine misinformation and hesitancy have all contributed to faltering immunisation progress. The trends increase the risk of outbreaks that can be prevented through vaccinations, including measles, polio, and diphtheria, the senior author added.
Time of India
6 hours ago
- Health
- Time of India
India among eight countries with half of world's unvaccinated children as of 2023: Study
New Delhi: India was among the eight countries where more than half the unvaccinated children from around the world lived as of 2023, an analysis published in The Lancet journal showed, "emphasising persistent inequities." Providing global estimates of current vaccine coverage, the study found that the same year, there were 15.7 million children -- 1.44 million in India -- who had received no doses of the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis vaccine in their first year. An international team of researchers forming the 'Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2023 Vaccine Coverage Collaborators' updated global, regional, and national estimates of routine childhood vaccine coverage from 1980 to 2023 for 204 countries and territories. In 1980, 53.5 per cent of children who had never received a routine childhood vaccine, or 'zero-dose' children, lived in just five countries -- India, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh --, they said. Routine childhood vaccinations are among the most powerful and cost-effective public health interventions available, said senior author Dr Jonathan Mosser from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington, US, which co-ordinates the GBD study. "Despite the monumental efforts of the past 50 years, progress has been far from universal. Large numbers of children remain under- and un-vaccinated," Dr Mosser said. Persistent global inequalities, challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and growth of vaccine misinformation and hesitancy have all contributed to faltering immunisation progress. The trends increase the risk of outbreaks that can be prevented through vaccinations, including measles, polio, and diphtheria, the senior author added. The study highlights "the critical need for targeted improvements to ensure that all children can benefit from lifesaving immunisations," Dr Mosser said. The team analysed data pertaining to 11 vaccine-dose combinations recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) for all children globally. Between 1980 and 2023, vaccine coverage was found to have doubled the world over against diseases, such as diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough (pertussis), measles, polio, and tuberculosis. Children who had never received a routine childhood vaccine -- zero-dose children -- further fell by 75 per cent fall, "from 58.8 million in 1980 to 14.7 million in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic", the researchers said. However, progress has stalled or reversed since 2010 in many countries. Measles vaccination rates fell in 100 of 204 countries between 2010 and 2019, while 21 of 36 high-income countries experienced declines in coverage for at least one vaccine dose against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, polio, or tuberculosis, the researchers said. They added that an "accelerated progress" would be needed to achieve the 2030 target of halving the number of zero-dose children, compared to 2019 levels, with only 18 of 204 countries and territories estimated to have already met this target as of 2023. Two-thirds (65 per cent) of the children never having received a vaccine dose but would need to be vaccinated between 2023 and 2030 live in sub-Saharan Africa (4.28 million) and South Asia (1.33 million), the team said. "As of 2023, more than 50 per cent of the 15.7 million global zero-dose children resided in just eight countries (Nigeria, India, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Indonesia, and Brazil), emphasising persistent inequities," the authors wrote.
Saudi Gazette
8 hours ago
- Health
- Saudi Gazette
Millions of children at risk as vaccine uptake stalls
LONDON — Progress in vaccinating children against a variety of life-threatening diseases has stalled in the past two decades — and even gone backwards in some countries — a new global study suggests. The situation has been made worse by the Covid pandemic, leaving millions of children unprotected from diseases such as measles, tuberculosis and polio. The researchers are calling for a concerted effort to provide better and more equal access to vaccines. Child health experts warn that cuts to international aid budgets that fund vaccination programs, combined with vaccine scepticism, are creating a "perfect storm". The global childhood vaccination program has been a huge success. Since 1974, more than four billion children have been vaccinated, preventing an estimated 150 million deaths nearly half a century until 2023, researchers say vaccine coverage since 2010 progress has stagnated, to the extent that there are now wide variations in vaccine coverage around the world.A study, published in the medical journal The Lancet, says measles vaccinations have declined in nearly 100 Covid-19 pandemic made things even worse, because of disruption to vaccine programmes during 2023, there were nearly 16 million children who had not had any childhood vaccinations – most of them in sub-Saharan Africa and south author Dr Jonathan Mosser, from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, in the United States, says large numbers of children remain under-vaccinated and un-vaccinated."Routine childhood vaccinations are among the most powerful and cost-effective public health interventions available, but persistent global inequalities, challenges from the Covid pandemic, and the growth of vaccine misinformation and hesitancy have all contributed to faltering immunisation progress," he Mosser said there was now increased the risk of outbreaks of diseases such as measles, polio and children should benefit from life-saving immunisations, he discrepancies remain between vaccination rates in wealthier and lower-income the report's authors warn that vaccination rates have fallen in Europe, the US and other wealthy countries Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, says the findings present a concerning picture."More children will be hospitalised, permanently damaged and die from fully preventable diseases if the trend is not reversed."Alas, the cuts in global health funding mean that this situation is set to deteriorate," Prof Pollard David Elliman, from University College London, says many factors have contributed to the current situation."Around the world, the increasing number of countries torn apart by civil unrest and wars, combined with the drastic cuts in foreign aid from rich nations, such as USA and UK, makes it difficult to get vaccines to many populations," he said."Where it appears that policy is being made on the basis of ill-informed opinion, rather than science, we have a perfect storm," Dr Elliman researchers recommend that all countries try to strengthen primary healthcare systems and combat misinformation around vaccines to prevent parents being hesitant about getting their children also call for a concerted effort to provide better and more equal access to vaccines around the world. — BBC
eNCA
9 hours ago
- Health
- eNCA
Child vaccine coverage faltering, threatening millions: study
NEW YORK - Efforts to vaccinate children against deadly diseases are faltering across the world due to economic inequality, Covid-era disruptions and misinformation, putting millions of lives at risk, research warned on Wednesday. These trends all increase the threat of future outbreaks of preventable diseases, the researchers said, while sweeping foreign aid cuts threaten previous progress in vaccinating the world's children. A new study published in The Lancet journal looked at childhood vaccination rates across 204 countries and territories. It was not all bad news. An immunisation programme by the World Health Organization was estimated to have saved an estimated 154 million lives over the last 50 years. And vaccination coverage against diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, polio and tuberculosis doubled between 1980 and 2023, the international team of researchers found. However, the gains slowed in the 2010s, when measles vaccinations decreased in around half of the countries, with the largest drop in Latin America. Meanwhile, in more than half of all high-income countries there were declines in coverage for at least one vaccine dose. Then the Covid-19 pandemic struck. Routine vaccination services were hugely disrupted during lockdowns and other measures, resulting in nearly 13 million extra children who never received any vaccine dose between 2020 to 2023, the study said. This disparity endured, particularly in poorer countries. In 2023, more than half of the world's 15.7 million completely unvaccinated children lived in just eight countries, the majority in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the study. In the European Union, 10 times more measles cases were recorded last year compared to 2023. In the United States, a measles outbreak surged past 1,000 cases across 30 states last month, which is already more than were recorded in all of 2024. Cases of polio, long eradicated in many areas thanks to vaccination, have been rising in Pakistan and Afghanistan, while Papua New Guinea is currently enduring a polio outbreak. - 'Tragedy' - "Routine childhood vaccinations are among the most powerful and cost-effective public health interventions available," said senior study author Jonathan Mosser of the US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). "But persistent global inequalities, challenges from the Covid pandemic, and the growth of vaccine misinformation and hesitancy have all contributed to faltering immunisation progress," he said in a statement. In addition, there are "rising numbers of displaced people and growing disparities due to armed conflict, political volatility, economic uncertainty, climate crises," added lead study author Emily Haeuser, also from the IHME. The researchers warned the setbacks could threaten the WHO's goal of having 90 percent of the world's children and adolescents receive essential vaccines by 2030. The WHO also aims to halve the number of children who have received no vaccine doses by 2030 compared to 2019 levels. Just 18 countries have achieved this so far, according to the study, which was funded by the Gates Foundation and the Gavi vaccine alliance. The global health community has also been reeling since President Donald Trump's administration drastically slashed US international aid earlier this year. "For the first time in decades, the number of kids dying around the world will likely go up this year instead of down because of massive cuts to foreign aid," Bill Gates said in a separate statement on Tuesday. "That is a tragedy," the Microsoft co-founder said, committing $1.6 billion to Gavi, which is holding a fund-raising summit in Brussels on Wednesday. dl/yad
