Three million children in India missed DPT dose in 2020 because of pandemic: Unicef

However, Unicef said India was “quick to prevent further backslide with catchup programmes” such as the Intensified Mission Indradhanush 3, which reduced the number of children who had not received the first dose from 3 million to 2.7 million in 2021. In 2019, 1.4 million children in the country did not receive the first dose.

“India successfully managed to prevent a decline in coverage, while ensuring a continued focus on Covid-19 vaccination. A rapid resumption of routine immunisation services coupled with evidence-based catch-up campaigns enabled India to prevent a backslide on routine immunisation coverage,’’said Mainak Chatterjee, a health specialist with Unicef India.

The DPT vaccine is considered a marker for immunisation coverage across countries. At 81 per cent now, it represents the “largest sustained decline in childhood vaccinations’’ in 30 years, according to the UN agency.

Aiming to immunise every pregnant woman and child, India launched Intensified Mission Indradhanush 4.0 in February 2022. It is globally the largest vaccination drive reaching out to missed children and pregnant women. Annually, India vaccinates more than 30 million pregnant women and 27 million children through its universal immunisation programme.

Globally, 25 million children missed out on one or more doses of the DTP vaccine through routine immunisation services in 2021 alone. This is two million more than those who missed out on them in 2020 and six million more than in 2019.

“The decline was due to many factors including an increased number of children living in conflict and fragile settings where immunization access is often challenging, increased misinformation and Covid-19-related issues such as service and supply chain disruptions, resource diversion to response efforts, and containment measures that limited immunization service access and availability,’’ said the Unicef release.

Vaccine coverage dropped in every region, with the east Asia and Pacific region recording the steepest reversal in DTP3 coverage, falling nine percentage points in just two years. Unicef said that 18 million of the 25 million children who did not receive a single DTP dose in 2021 belong to low- and middle-income countries, “with India, Nigeria, Indonesia, Ethiopia and the Philippines recording the highest numbers”. “Among countries with the largest relative increases in the number of children who did not receive a single vaccine between 2019 and 2021 are Myanmar and Mozambique,” the UN agency added.

Uganda and Pakistan fared well, with the former maintaining high levels of routine coverage while rolling out targeted Covid-19 vaccination programmes. Pakistan returned to pre-pandemic levels of coverage thanks to government interventions such as catch-up efforts.

This “historic backsliding in rates of immunisation’’ is happening against a backdrop of rapidly rising rates of severe acute malnutrition, the Unicef said.
The coverage of the first dose of the measles vaccine dropped to 81 per cent in 2021, the lowest since 2008. Over 24 million children missed out on their first measles vaccine dose in 2021, over five million more than in 2019. A further 14.7 million did not receive their second doses. Similarly, compared with 2019, 6.7 million more children missed out on the third dose of the polio vaccine and 3.5 million missed the first dose of the HPV vaccine, which protects girls against cervical cancer later in life, according to the report.