In April 2020, the World Health Organization warned that postponing vaccinations due to the imposing urgency of the Covid-19 pandemic will result in children dying from utterly preventable diseases. The world’s focus on Covid-19 is understandable, but the tragic result is the neglect of many other health challenges officials have laboured on for years.
Vaccination is a mainstay of preventing illness and reducing mortality in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in children under five years of age, but, regrettably, routine childhood vaccinations have fallen behind since the beginning of the pandemic, making children more susceptible to preventable diseases such as measles and tetanus.
In 2020, 23 million children were not able to meet their routine immunisation services, 3.7 million more than in 2019. On specific vaccinations, when comparing numbers to 2019, 3.5 million more children missed their DTP-1 vaccine and three million their first measles shot. This is a significant number of children that missed their routine vaccinations in 2020.
Read the full article in the Daily Maverick here.
