UNITED STATES: A new report from UNICEF states that people all around the world lost confidence in the significance of routine childhood vaccinations against deadly diseases like measles and polio during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The public’s perception of immunisation of children decreased between 2019 and 2021 in 52 of the 55 countries surveyed, said the UN agency.
The data was a “worrying warning signal” of growing vaccine scepticism amid false information, declining faith in governments, and political polarisation, said UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.
According to UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell, “We cannot allow routine immunisation confidence to perish along with the pandemic. Otherwise, the next wave of fatalities might include more kids with diphtheria, measles, or other diseases that can be avoided.”
The shift in perspective was especially concerning, said the agency, as it followed the most continuous decline in childhood immunisation in a generation during COVID interruptions.
In total, 67 million kids missed out on one or more potentially life-saving vaccinations during the pandemic, and despite growing outbreaks, efforts to catch up have so far faltered.
As per UNICEF’s flagship annual report, The State of the World’s Children, there were disparities in the picture of vaccine confidence around the world.
The percentage of people who agreed with the statement “vaccines are important for children” fell by 44% in Papua New Guinea and South Korea and by more than a third in Senegal, Ghana, and Japan.
It fell by 13.6 percentage points in the US. The survey also noted that confidence in India, Mexico, and China either remained unchanged or increased.
The report also stressed that vaccine confidence could change easily and that the findings might not represent a long-term trend.
Despite the decline in confidence, over 80% of respondents in nearly half of the countries polled still believed that childhood vaccinations were crucial.
The statistics were gathered by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Vaccine Confidence Project.
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