According to US centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the vaccination coverage worldwide had remained constant at 86%. More than 129 countries have surpassed the level of vaccination coverage over 90% which constituted the Global Vaccination Action Plan of 2020. In the previous year the number of countries that achieved the goal was 123. The data was taken from the CDC’s report on Global Vaccination coverage 2018.
The number of children that were still not getting fully vaccinated was around 13.5 million worldwide. Most of these children belong to the poorest African countries and some Latin American countries. They do not get vaccinated due to lack of health care infrastructure in these countries.
Many of the global outbreaks like the latest measles outbreak have been due to the low immunization coverage in the world. Many of the diseases protected by proper vaccination have the potential to become global endemic and cause huge loss of human life and panic among the people.
Providing vaccination to children in a region or a country requires health clinics, doctors and medical check-up units and some of the initiatives should be taken from the government as well.
Countries, where the children did not receive proper immunization in the child first year, were highest in Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Philippines, Brazil, Angola, Vietnam and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Even though the percentage of coverage for the routine immunization diseases like the Measles Containing Vaccine (MCV) and the Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis (DTP) vaccine was somewhat stagnant the vaccination coverage was increasing for the new and underused vaccines.
It suggests that access to these vaccines is increasing and has been able to form a part of national immunization programs in most of the poor countries.
Vaccinating the children in those regions where there is little healthcare infrastructure and no help from the government still remains a challenge for WHO.
