Child Vaccine Coverage Faltering, Threatening Millions

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 recently.

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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 immunization program 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.