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A child receives an oral vaccine in New Delhi, India, June 17. India has made significant progress in improving access to infant vaccinations.

Sanchit Khanna / Hindustan Times / Via Getty Images

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Sanchit Khanna / Hindustan Times / Via Getty Images

How to save the lives of more than 150 million children?

The answer: Infantile vaccinations.

A little over 50 years ago, the World Health Organization launched its essential program on vaccination. Since then, vaccination rates have improved considerably and researchers estimate that 4.4 billion people have been reached and that 154 million childhood deaths have been avoided.

But don’t celebrate too fast.

These long -term trends obscure a less pink image of what has happened in recent years, according to a study published Tuesday in Lancet. Researchers have found that, since 2010, efforts to stimulate vaccination rates have blocked or reversed in many places.

For example, in 100 of the 204 countries, the researchers examined, the percentage of children who dropped the measles vaccine between 2010 and 2019. In Argentina, a 12% drop in children obtaining their first dose of the measles vaccine.

Another example: twenty -one of the 36 high -income countries have dropped to vaccination rates for at least one of the vaccinations that favored when launching its vaccination program – vaccines to prevent diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus, darling, cough, measles and polio. Take Finland, for example. He experienced an 8% drop in children receiving the third dose of their diphtheria-tetanus-feet vaccination. In Austria, there was a drop of 6%.

For the study, researchers have brought together more than 1,000 data sources – from domestic surveys to national vaccination reports – to reconstruct what is happening in the world.

“Underlying the work is an immense effort of data conservation … offering solid foundations for the conclusions of the study,” said Edward Parker in a declaration. It was not involved in the study and is co -director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Vaccine Center.

NPR spoke with Dr. Jonathan Mosser – One of the authors of the study and assistant professor of the sciences of health metrics at the Institute for metrics and the assessment of health (IHME) at the University of Washington – to hear its reflections on the results.

Here are four points that stood out to Mosser.

It is “a critical period” with regard to vaccines.

While Mosser and his colleagues rushed over the data, he said, it was a question of seeing how much the progress has been made and how many challenges the world is confronted with.

“The last 50 years really illustrate the promise, the potential of vaccination,” he said. “But, there are many challenges for the moment: there are challenges related to conflicts, there are challenges linked to supply chains and challenges associated with disinformation of vaccines.”

There are also major changes in the financing of initiatives that get children their vaccines, even if they are in low -income countries and in distant places. For example, the United States has cut its billion dollars subsidy in Gavi, alliance vaccinationThis helps get vaccines for half of the children in the world. However, today, the Gates Foundation has announced that it would give $ 1.6 billion over the next five years to support Gavi.

Mosser says that all changes and challenges mean that world vaccination efforts are “at a very critical moment”.

“The world will have to choose a trajectory,” he says. “Are we going to turn our back on one of the most remarkable public health achievements that the world has ever seen?”

India is a story of “great success”: this has reduced the number of children at zero doses.

“”Zero dose children“Are those who receive no vaccine.

Researchers believe that the number of children in India who obtained their first dose of diphtheria vaccine, tetanus and darling in 2023 was 93%, which is close to levels in certain high -income countries.

Mosser says that India stands out as a country that has reached very high vaccination rates in a very large population “and this was therefore a great success in the world of immunization.”

He not only underlines an effort of universal immunization, but also a very targeted effort, where India decided to identify the populations and the places where children did not obtain vaccines, then designed programs to fill the gaps. He also says that India relied on technology. An example: Building a fantasy system to monitor their vaccine supply chain and ensure that vaccines are where they should be exactly when they are necessary.

Covid was bad for vaccination rates – but it’s better

The cocovated pandemic was a major obstacle for vaccination efforts. Health professionals have been diverted from vaccination efforts, closed clinics, imports and exports of bottles and syringes were blurred. In 2021, more than 25 million children missed at least one vaccination, according to WHO.

There was a concerted effort to find these children and vaccinate them. Looking at the figures, Mosser was pleasantly surprised.

“One thing that marked us is that when we initially examined the disturbances due to the cocovio pandemic – during the first two months of the pandemic – we expected an even greater drop in the coverage that we saw,” he said.

“We do not come back to the place where we must be, but … things could have been very worse,” he adds, creating local awareness efforts as well as large international initiatives such as The great catch -up Mercé by WHO, Unicef, Gavi and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which is a sponsor of NPR and this blog).

The birth rate changing the world presents insurance – and challenges.

The number of children born each year should decrease by around 1.6% by 2030. But not all countries are part of this trend – and which counts for vaccination efforts, explains Mosser.

“In many countries where vaccine coverage is low, there has been – and continues to be – a strong increase in [population]”Said Mosser.” And so when more children are born each year, it simply requires more resources to reach the same levels of vaccination coverage. “”