New Delhi (NVI): More than 117 million children in 37 countries may miss out on receiving life-saving measles vaccine as COVID-19 continues to spread globally, according to a joint report by the world’s top health organisations.
Measles & Rubella Initiative, a health partnership that includes the World Health Organization, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and United Nations Foundation, came up with the statistics, considering the present pandemic situation.
The Measles & Rubella Initiative is a global partnership to stop measles and rubella.
The group has urged countries to continue routine immunization services, while ensuring the safety of communities and health workers and issued guidelines to help sustain immunization activities during the COVID-19 crisis.
In a statement, the group said, “the pandemic requires a coordinated effort and commitment of resources to ensure frontline health workers around the world are protected, as they face and respond to this new threat”.
“At the same time, we must also champion efforts to protect essential immunization services, now and for the future,” it added.
Despite having a safe and effective vaccine for over 50 years, measles cases surged over recent years and claimed more than 140,000 lives in 2018, mostly of children and babies all of which were preventable, the report said.
Vaccination campaigns have been paused or postponed in 24 countries to help prevent further spread of COVID-19. Campaigns expected to take place later this year in an additional 13 countries may also not be implemented, it said.
Apart from this, children younger than 12 months of age are more likely to die from measles, and if the circulation of virus is not stopped, their risk of exposure to measles will increase.
The WHO has also issued new guidelines to help countries to sustain immunisation activities during the pandemic. The guidelines recommend that governments temporarily pause preventive immunisation campaigns where there is no active outbreak of a vaccine-preventable disease.
The M&RI has urged countries to continue routine immunisation services, while ensuring the safety of communities and health workers.
The recommendations ask governments to undertake a risk-benefit analysis when deciding whether or not to delay vaccination campaigns in response to outbreaks, with the possibility of postponement where risks of Covid-19 transmission are deemed unacceptably high.
“If the difficult choice to pause vaccination is made due to the spread of Covid-19, we urge leaders to intensify efforts to track unvaccinated children, so that the most vulnerable populations can be provided with measles vaccines as soon as it becomes possible to do so,” it said.
“While we know there will be many demands on health systems and frontline workers during and beyond the threat of Covid-19, delivering all immunisation services, including measles vaccines, is essential to saving lives that would otherwise be lost to vaccine-preventable diseases,” the group said.
The report has also asked countries to recognise the role of parents and caretakers in ensuring that their children are vaccinated by following physical distancing.
“Finally, we call on country leaders to implement effective strategies to engage communities, ensure supply and demand for vaccination remains strong, and help assure a healthy life for every child especially in time of such crisis,” the group said.
