67 million children missed out on critical vaccines in the past three years
UNICEF renewed its commitment to ensure that every child gets vaccinated with the release of its 2023 State of the World’s Children (SOWC) report on Thursday — calling on governments to act urgently to shore up flagging immunization services, and announcing a new catch-up and recovery campaign to help them do it.
Vaccination coverage dropped sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving millions more children unprotected against some of childhood’s most serious diseases, according to the report. The deteriorating situation reflects not just pandemic-related disruptions in primary health care services, however; declines in immunization are also the result of conflict, fragility and extreme weather events in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Somalia, Ukraine and other countries, the report states.