The United Nations Children’s Fund and World Health Organization are calling for a $655-million-dollar investment to address the potential vulnerability.
Lockdowns due to COVID-19 and the accompanying reduced access to medical services on a global scale have led to a concerning drop in immunization against polio and the measles—two deadly but preventable diseases.
The United Nations Children’s Fund and World Health Organization are calling for a $655-million-dollar investment to address the potential vulnerability.
The COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting immunizations worldwide, leaving millions of children at risk of preventable diseases. UNICEF and @WHO are calling for urgent action to avert major epidemics of measles and polio.#VaccinesWork pic.twitter.com/DAluGJ687a
— UNICEF (@UNICEF)
In 2019, the WHO reported that 86 percent of children in its member states had received three polio vaccines, but estimate that number may have been cut in half by COVID. Currently, the disease is only found in Pakistan and Afghanistan. For the past three decades, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPIEI) has used the development and proliferation of the vaccine to contain the viral disease, but those efforts have been largely frustrated by a ban on international travel and government shutdowns.
In a similar vein, the measles vaccine in 2019 was distributed to 85 percent of the population. 71 Percent had received two. But in the past year and a half, measles cases grew to their highest numbers in twenty years worldwide.
Leaders from both organizations stress that the danger isn’t that polio and the measles are already back and spreading—at least not at an uncontrollable rate. Instead, the concern of experts like Henrietta Force, the Executive Director of the UNICEF, is that an emphasis on combatting COVID has detracted from protections that would otherwise be in place against the two diseases; an attempt to protect doctors and patients alike from the spread of COVID-19 has created a chink in the armor elsewhere.
Director Force says that’s a risk the global medial community can’t take.
“We cannot allow the fight against one deadly disease to cause us to lose ground in the fight against other diseases. Addressing the global COVID-19 pandemic is critical. However, other deadly diseases also threaten the lives of millions of children in some of the poorest areas of the world,” she said.
If left unaddressed, a spotlight on COVID could mean other diseases have a chance to grown in the dark and catch depleted health services off-guard.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/buuYS1KeR4Y?start=2&feature=oembed
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