Vaccinations against measles, a potentially deadly disease, have fallen worldwide since the Covid-19 pandemic, putting tens of millions of children at risk, a global report published on Wednesday warned, cited by AFP.

“For the past three years, we’ve been sounding the alarm about declining immunization rates and increasing health risks for children around the world,” said Ephrem Tekle Lemango, head of UNICEF’s immunization programs. “We have very little time to recover lost ground,” he warned.

Due to Covid-19, immunization programs have been seriously affected, said the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Behind every statistic in this report is a child at risk of a preventable disease,” he says.

The lowest level since 2008

In 2021, about 40 million children missed a dose of the measles vaccine — the first dose for 25 million and the second dose for 14.7 million — according to a joint report by WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US.

Thus, global first-dose coverage reached its lowest level since 2008.

Countries with the highest number of unimmunized children include Nigeria, India, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia and Indonesia.

Measles, a highly contagious viral infection for which there is no cure once developed, gets its name from the red spots it causes on the body, including a high fever and possible lung complications.

Achieving herd immunity requires a very high level of vaccination coverage.

The report estimates there will be 9 million cases and 128,000 deaths worldwide by 2021. In total, serious epidemics affected 22 countries last year, mainly in Africa and the Middle East.

Infections have fallen sharply since the 2000s, but the number of cases and deaths in 2021 was higher than in 2020, according to the study.

In April, the WHO warned that the number of reported measles cases had increased by almost 80% in the first two months of 2022 compared to the same period the previous year.

“There is no time to waste, we must work urgently to ensure that these life-saving vaccines reach every child,” said Elizabeth Cousens, President of the UN Fund.