Only 21K children missed measles vaccine, says India contradicting WHO-CDC report

The Union Health Ministry on Saturday contradicted a new WHO-CDC report on children missing their first dose of measles vaccine, claiming just over 21,000 Indian kids didn’t get the shot unlike the estimate of 1.1 million made by the two agencies.

The ministry said only 21,310 children missed their first dose of the measles-containing vaccine in 2022-23, once again raising questions on health data released by the UN health body.

According to the report by the World Health Organisation and the US Centre for Disease Control, globally 22 million children didn’t get their first measles shot in 2022 and half of them live in just 10 countries including India where an estimated 1.1 million infants didn’t get the first dose of the vaccine.

The figures are calculated on the basis of the estimated number reported under the WHO UNICEF Estimates National Immunization Coverage 2022 report which covers the time period from January 1, 2022, to December 31, 2022.

The ministry, quoting its own health management information system database, claimed out of eligible 2,63,84,580 children, 2,63,63,270 received the first dose in 2022-23, leaving only 21,310 children who missed their first dose. “The WHO-CDC report doesn’t reflect the true picture,” it added in a statement.

The discordant note on measles data is not the first time India rejected WHO’s India-specific health statistics. Earlier New Delhi didn’t agree with Covid-19 mortality estimates calculated by the WHO using a common method that was applied to all the countries in the world.

DH queries on the data discrepancy to the WHO team that prepared the measles report remain unanswered till the time of filing this article.

Other countries with the highest number of infants who did not receive MCV1 were Nigeria (3 million), Democratic Republic of the Congo (1.8 million), Ethiopia (1.7 million), Pakistan (1.1. million), Angola (0.8 million), Philippines (0.8 million), Indonesia (0.7 million),Brazil (0.5 million), and Madagascar (0.5 million).

Measles is a highly contagious vaccine-preventable childhood infection that requires at least 95 per cent of eligible kids to receive a vaccine to stop transmission from isolated cases. The ministry said multiple steps were taken to expand measles vaccination coverage

Following the pandemic, there has been a global decline in measles vaccination coverage, as a result of which measles cases in 2022 have increased by 18 per cent, and deaths have increased by 43 per cent globally compared to 2021.

While a modest increase in global vaccination coverage occurred in 2022 from 2021, there were still 33 million children who missed a measles vaccine dose: nearly 22 million missed their first dose and an additional 11 million missed their second dose.