India achieves 93% coverage for DPT vaccines; 1.6 mn children still not covered fully: WHO-UNICEF report

This was revealed in the 2022 WHO/UNICEF estimates of National Immunization Coverage (WUENIC)

India accounted for 1.6 million of the unvaccinated and under-vaccinated children for DPT-3 (diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus), despite achieving 93 per cent coverage for its 22.5 million infants in 2022.

This was revealed in the 2022 WHO/UNICEF estimates of National Immunization Coverage (WUENIC) for its 195 member states released on July 17.

DPT vaccine is a class of combination vaccines against three infectious diseases in humans: diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus. This vaccine is administered to children in 3 doses, for children below 7 years of age. The coverage of this vaccine is often used to assess how well countries are doing in providing routine immunisation services to children.

Improvement after the pandemic

After countries stepped up efforts to address the historic backsliding in immunisation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, global immunisation services reached around 4 million more children in 2022 compared with the previous year. In 2022, about 20.5 million children remained either unvaccinated or under-vaccinated (missed out on one or more vaccines delivered through routine immunisation services). It is a slight improvement from the 24.4 million under/unvaccinated children recorded in 2021.

The report noted that the gains could be attributed to improvements in immunisation in countries like India and Indonesia with large populations of infants, which masked the slower recovery, stagnation or ongoing declines witnessed in the majority of low- and middle-income countries. About 104 countries have achieved at least 90 percent coverage of DPT-3 vaccine.

“Beneath the positive trend lies a grave warning,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “Until more countries mend the gaps in routine immunisation coverage, children everywhere will remain at risk of contracting and dying from diseases we can prevent,” she said in a press statement.

Of the 73 countries that recorded substantial declines in coverage during the pandemic, 15 recovered to pre-pandemic levels, 24 are on route to recovery and, 34 have stagnated or continued declining in immunisation coverage, according to the report.

Furthermore, zero-dose children — the number of children who did not receive any vaccines — reached 14.3 million, a significant increase of 1.4 million compared with 2019 globally.

Other vaccines

The report also revealed that by 2022, only 14 percent of girls were fully protected against the Human papillomavirus (HPV) globally. HPV is a viral infection that can lead to cervical cancer in women.

The report also noted that there has been a slow recovery in measles vaccine coverage. Global coverage against measles was 83 percent in 2022, up 2 percentage points from 2021. The current level is lower than the 86 percent coverage in 2019. The herd immunity threshold for measles is 95 percent. Inadequate coverage in many parts of the world has resulted in preventable measles and polio outbreaks in the past year, according to the report.