Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
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Flags ‘gap’ in efforts to prevent disease
Almost 20 million children missed out on potentially life-saving vaccinations last year, the UN said on Monday, as surging measles cases highlighted “dangerous” gaps in efforts to shield children from preventable illness. Last year, 19.4 million children were “not fully vaccinated”, the World Health Organization and the UNICEF said in a report — up from 18.7 million in 2017 and about 18.5 million in 2016. This pointed to a “dangerous stagnation of vaccination rates, due to conflict, inequality and complacency,” the UN agencies said. The comparative birth rate was not provided, but they warned the global quest for widespread vaccination against life-threatening disease has stagnated. The global coverage rate for a key vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough) and measles has been stalled at 86% since 2010, it said. Some 3,50,000 measles cases were reported globally last year — more than double the 2017 number, a “real-time indicator” of the quest to expand vaccine coverage, UNICEF chief Henrietta Fore said. By last year, 90 countries — though largely wealthy ones — integrated the human papilloma virus vaccine into their national programmes, thus making it available to one in three girls worldwide, it said. A worldwide resurgence of measles is partly blamed on the so-called “anti-vax” movement based on fake science wrongly linking vaccines to side effects including autism.
