MILLIONS OF KIDS MISS THEIR SHOTS
Unvaccinated children causing measles outbreaks, says Unicef
MORE than 20 million children a year missed out on measles vaccines across the world in the past eight years, laying a path of exposure to a virus that is now causing disease outbreaks globally, a United Nations report said yesterday.
“The measles virus will always find unvaccinated children,” said Henrietta Fore, executive director of the UN children’s fund (Unicef ), adding: “The ground for the global measles outbreaks we are witnessing today was laid years ago.”
The Unicef report said an estimated 169 million children missed out on the first dose of the measles vaccine between 2010 and 2017 — equating to 21.1 million children a year on average.
As a result of greater vulnerability to the disease, measles infections worldwide nearly quadrupled in the first quarter of this year against the same period last year to 112,163 cases, according to World Health Organisation data.
In 2017, some 110,000 people, most of them children, died from measles — up 22 per cent from the year before, Unicef said.
Two doses of the measles vaccine are essential to protect children and the WHO says 95 per cent vaccine coverage is needed for “herd immunity”.
But due to lack of access, poor health systems, complacency, and in some cases, fear or scepticism about vaccines, Unicef said the global coverage of the first dose of the measles vaccine was reported at 85 per cent in 2017 — a level that has remained similar for the past decade.
Global coverage for the second dose is even lower, at 67 per cent.
The United States, which currently is fighting its biggest measles outbreak in almost 20 years, topped Unicef’s list of places with the most children missing the first dose of the vaccine between 2010 and 2017, at more than 2.5 million.
In poorer countries, however, the situaiton is “critical”.
Nigeria in 2017, for example, had the highest number of children under 1 who missed out on the first dose, at nearly four million. It was followed by India, with 2.9 million, Pakistan and Indonesia, with 1.2 million each, and Ethiopia, with 1.1 million.
Fore said measles was “far too contagious” a disease to be ignored, and urged health officials to do more to fight it.
“If we are serious about averting the spread of this dangerous but preventable disease, we need to vaccinate every child in rich and poor countries alike,” she said.