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Journalism of Courage
In 2022, an estimated 11 lakh children missed their first dose of the measles vaccine in India, placing the country among the ten nations with the highest measles vaccination gap, even post-pandemic, a new report from the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveals.
The report also highlights India as one of the 37 countries that experienced outbreaks, recording 40,967 cases in 2022. Despite the government’s implementation of special vaccination drives in response to the outbreak, gaps in India’s measles vaccination coverage persisted. Globally, immunization against measles reached its lowest levels since 2008 during the pandemic, resulting in an 18% increase in cases and a 43% increase in deaths in 2022.
Measles is a highly contagious viral infection, which most commonly affects children. While the infection itself usually causes high fever, cough, runny nose, and red rashes all over the body, complications may lead to death.
Globally, 1.3 lakh children continue to die of complications such as swelling of the brain, pneumonia and breathing problems, and severe diarrhoea and dehydration. Vaccination against the infection, however, has brought down the mortality due to the infection by 82%, averting 5.7 crore deaths between 2000 and 2022.
While the measles-rubella vaccine is part of routine immunisation for children in India, a special drive was carried out in 2022-23 due to an outbreak after the pandemic.
With most of the country’s health machinery busy dealing with Covid-19, there were delays and disruptions in childhood vaccination and a decline in coverage. This led to an increase in measles cases being reported mainly from five states — Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, and Maharashtra. At least 13 deaths due to measles were reported in Maharashtra in 2022.
This led to the government launching an outbreak response immunisation drive, vaccinating 13 lakh children between the ages of nine months and 15 years in the affected states and their neighbours between November 2022 and May 2023.
India is targeting 95% vaccination coverage with two doses to achieve measles and rubella elimination by 2023.
With the aim of eliminating viral diseases, the government launched a one-time vaccination campaign even for older children in 2017. While routine immunisation would start giving the MR vaccine to children up to the age of 5 years, a special drive was organised in a phased manner to cover children up to the age of 15 years or one-third of the total population of the country.
By 2023, only two states — West Bengal and Delhi — remained to complete this one-time drive to vaccinate older children. West Bengal launched the drive in January this year, vaccinating 1 crore children in 10 days, and 2.2 crore by the end of the campaign. Delhi, on the other hand, could not extend the drive to older children due to pending litigations and vaccinated 11 lakh children up to the age of five years in January this year.
While there was an increase in vaccination coverage in 2022, there were still 33 million children globally who missed either both the doses or the second dose of the vaccine, according to the report. Low-income countries, where the risk of death from measles is highest, continue to have the lowest vaccination rates at only 66%; a rate that shows no recovery at all from the backsliding during the pandemic, the WHO said in a statement.
“The lack of recovery in measles vaccine coverage in low-income countries following the pandemic is an alarm bell for action. Measles is called the inequity virus for good reason. It is the disease that will find and attack those who aren’t protected. Children everywhere have the right to be protected by the lifesaving measles vaccine, no matter where they live,” Kate O’Brien, WHO Director for Immunization, Vaccine and Biologicals, said in a statement.
