War has prevented 15 million children from being vaccinated against diseases, UN warns | Global Development

Conflict has hampered efforts to vaccinate children around the world, health officials have warned, as new figures showed an estimated 14.5 million children have not received a single dose of vaccine.

According to data from the UN children’s agency UNICEF and the World Health Organization, more than half of all children live in countries where armed conflict or other humanitarian crises have created fragile and vulnerable situations.

The war in Sudan has led to a dramatic increase in the number of unvaccinated children, from about 110,000 in 2021 to about 701,000 last year. Yemen has 580,000 unvaccinated children, up from 424,000 three years ago.

In addition to the 14.5 million “zero dose” children in 2023, 6.5 million children were “under-vaccinated,” meaning they had not received all the recommended doses.

Both figures are up from 2022, officials said Monday, warning that despite progress in some regions, the international goal of halving the number of children who have not received a dose by 2030 was not on track.

“This puts the lives of the most vulnerable children at risk,” said Dr Katherine O’Brien, director of WHO’s Vaccines and Immunization Department.

She said children in humanitarian situations “also lack security, nutrition, health care and, as a result, are at high risk of dying from a vaccine-preventable disease if they contract it.”

Global vaccination coverage has yet to return to the levels of 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted immunization programs. That year, 12.8 million children were classified as “zero doses” and another 5.5 million were under-vaccinated.

More than half of the world’s zero-dose children live in 10 countries, which officials say are “a mix of countries with large birth cohorts, weak health systems, or both.”

These countries include Nigeria, India, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia. In 2023, Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan joined the list.

Douglas Hageman, UNICEF’s representative in Sudan, said the country’s health system had collapsed during the war.

“National vaccination coverage has dropped from 85% before the war to around 50% currently, with average rates of 30% in active conflict areas and as low as 8% in South Darfur,” he said.

Outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, rubella and polio, are common, Hageman added.

Vaccinations in Yemen are “alarmingly” low, said Peter Hawkins, UNICEF’s representative in the country.

“A combination of factors that have worsened in recent years, including lack of access to health care, vaccine hesitancy and the deepening socio-economic and political crisis, have made the situation worse,” he said.

O’Brien warned that misinformation circulating during the pandemic “continues to reverberate in many countries and is actually leading to deaths.”

The UN report said there had been a sharp increase in coverage of the HPV vaccine, which can protect against cervical cancer, but it had yet to be introduced in 51 countries, including China and India.