Efforts to vaccinate children worldwide against deadly diseases such as measles and diphtheria began to recover in 2022 after a historic backslide caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
But the recovery remains uneven, with strong bouncebacks in large lower-middle income countries such as India and Indonesia masking ongoing problems in many smaller and poorer countries, the agencies said in a statement released on Tuesday.
In 2022, 20.5 million children missed out on one or more routine childhood vaccines, down from 24.4 million children in 2021. Despite the progress, the numbers are still higher than in 2019, when 18.4 million children were not fully protected.