16 lakh Indian kids missed vital vaccine shots in 2023: WHO-UNICEF report

The report shows the gains made in 2022 over 2021 has eroded a year later as the measles and DPT (Diphtheria, Pertussis and Tetanus) vaccines could not be administered to over 350,000 kids in 2023, despite the Union Health Ministry's campaigns.

New Delhi: Three years after the pandemic, India’s child immunisation level is yet to reach the pre-pandemic stage as the national programme missed 1.6 million children for DPT and measles shots in 2023, says the World Health Organisation and the UNICEF in its latest global immunisation report released on Monday.

The report shows the gains made in 2022 over 2021 has eroded a year later as the measles and DPT (Diphtheria, Pertussis and Tetanus) vaccines could not be administered to over 350,000 kids in 2023, despite the Union Health Ministry launching catch-up campaigns to improve India’s child immunisation records.

The 1.6 million “zero-dose” children in 2023 is 45 per cent higher than 1.1 million such children in 2022, but significantly lower than the two previous pandemic years.

“India's immunisation coverage was quite affected in the pandemic years of 2020 and 21 but since then it is on an encouraging trajectory. The 2023 achievement is still slightly below 2019,” Jan Grevendonk, Technical Officer in charge of immunization, vaccines and biologicals at the WHO headquarters in Geneva told DH.

“The 2023 achievement is also a bit lower than 2022, but this is a pattern we see in many countries and may reflect some catch up activity in 2022,” he said, suggesting that children who might have missed the shot in 2021, were given the dose a year later.

The two UN agencies also red-flags India as one of the 52 nations that didn’t include HPV vaccination in the immunisation package even though cervical cancer remains the second biggest cause of cancer among women accounting for nearly 18 per cent of cancers in females.

Globally childhood immunization coverage stalled in 2023, leaving 2.7 million additional kids un- and under-vaccinated compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019, it says.

India is among the world’s ten worst nations with the lowest number of zero-dose children along with Nigeria, Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan and Pakistan.

The country’s immunisation coverage improved steadily from the turn of the millennium till 2019 when the pandemic hit the world, crippling most of the regular health services.

In 2020, the national programme missed 2.5-3.4 million children for DPT and measles vaccines, but the numbers improved in 2021 and 2022 only to fall back in 2023.

“The pandemic has severely disrupted global immunization progress, setting back decades of hard-fought gains. The latest figures show a worrying stagnation in DTP coverage and a distressingly large number of 'zero-dose' children who remain higher than pre-pandemic levels,” commented epidemiologist Giridhara Babu, who is not associated with the report.

“Close to home, the WHO South East Asia Region that includes India has seen a drop of 2 per cent in DTP1 coverage and nearly 3.5 million children are under vaccinated (drop out from DTP3 and DTP1). The dropouts and coverage are even more starker in regions that face fragility and conflict. It is crucial that nations urgently reprioritize and scale up catch-up immunization campaigns,” he added.