By the ICIR

ABOUT 20 million children missed out on life-saving vaccines globally in 2018, while three million children live in Nigeria, according to new data from the World Health Organisation and the UNICEF.

The report published on Monday indicates that most unvaccinated children live in the “poorest countries and are disproportionately in conflict-affected countries” where almost half are in 16 countries. The countries include Nigeria, Afganistan, the Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Ethiopia. Others countries are Ethiopia, Haiti, Iraq, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The vaccines for a child’s immunisation are including doses of hepatitis B, measles, yellow fever, pneumococcal conjugate, diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP) vaccines. But WHO says more than one in ten children were unvaccinated in 2018. If these children do get sick, WHO says, they are at “risk of the severest health consequences, and least likely to access lifesaving treatment and care”.

It notes that ten countries account for 11.7 of the 19.4 million under and unvaccinated children in the world. “This list includes some countries with moderate coverage and very large birth cohorts, and other countries with substantially lower coverage,” WHO explains.

On the measles vaccines, the UNICEF and WHO data shows that of the 774 local government areas in Nigeria, 283 have achieved 95 per cent coverage of the vaccine. In other words, 491 local government areas are yet to meet up with 95 per cent benchmark of vaccination coverage for measles in 2018.


Read more at
https://www.icirnigeria.org/20-million-children-unvaccinated-in-2018-globally-nigeria-has-highest-number/