LONDON (AP) \u2014 More than 14 million children did not receive a single vaccine last year \u2014 about the same number as the year before \u2014 according to U.N. health officials. Nine countries accounted for more than half of those unprotected children.<\/p>\n
In their annual estimate of global vaccine coverage, released Tuesday, the World Health Organization and UNICEF said about 89% of children under 1 year old got a first dose of the diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough vaccine in 2024, the same as in 2023. About 85% completed the three-dose series, up from 84% in 2023. <\/p>\n
Officials acknowledged, however, that the collapse of international aid this year will make it more difficult to reduce the number of unprotected children. In January, U.S. President Trump withdrew<\/a> the country from the WHO, froze nearly all humanitarian aid and later moved to close the U.S. AID Agency<\/a>. And last month, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.<\/a> said it was pulling the billions of dollars the U.S. had previously pledged<\/a> to the vaccines alliance Gavi, saying the group had \u201cignored the science.\u201d <\/p>\n Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic<\/a>, has previously raised questions the diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough vaccine \u2014 which has proven to be safe and effective after years of study and real-world use. Vaccines prevent 3.5 million to 5 million deaths a year, according to U.N. estimates. <\/p>\n \u201cDrastic cuts in aid, coupled with misinformation about the safety of vaccines, threaten to unwind decades of progress,\u201d said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.<\/p>\n U.N. experts said that access to vaccines remained \u201cdeeply unequal\u201d and that conflict and humanitarian crises quickly unraveled progress; Sudan had the lowest reported coverage against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough. The data showed that nine countries accounted for 52% of all children who missed out on immunizations entirely: Nigeria, India, Sudan, Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Angola.<\/p>\n WHO and UNICEF said coverage against measles rose slightly, with 76% of children worldwide receiving both vaccine doses. But experts say measles vaccine rates need to reach 95% to prevent outbreaks of the extremely contagious disease. WHO noted that 60 countries reported big measles outbreaks last year.<\/p>\n The U.S. is now having its worst measles outbreak<\/a> in more than three decades, while the disease has also surged across Europe<\/a>, with 125,000 cases in 2024 \u2014 twice as many as the previous year, according to WHO.<\/p>\n Last week, British authorities reported a child died of measles in a Liverpool hospital. Health officials said that despite years of efforts to raise awareness, only about 84% of children in the U.K. are protected.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is hugely concerning, but not at all surprising, that we are continuing to see outbreaks of measles,\u201d said Helen Bradford, a professor of children\u2019s health at University College London. \u201cThe only way to stop measles spreading is with vaccination,\u201d she said in a statement. \u201cIt is never too late to be vaccinated \u2014 even as an adult.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute\u2019s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 More than 14 million children did not receive a single vaccine last year \u2014 about…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":66689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[46861,69,440,57,210,47238,15006,2036,1060,80,15010,10419,1206,47237,67,132,68,26413,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-66688","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-disease-outbreaks","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-general-news","12":"tag-health","13":"tag-helen-bradford","14":"tag-immunizations","15":"tag-measles","16":"tag-medication","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-robert-f-kennedy-jr","19":"tag-sudan","20":"tag-united-nations","21":"tag-united-nations-childrens-fund","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-world-health-organization","26":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114855515489098558","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}