Sharjah24 – AFP: The WHO and partners called Monday for action to boost vaccination against measles and other diseases worldwide after the pandemic severely disrupted access to routine jabs.
The World Health Organization, along with the UN children's agency and the vaccine alliance Gavi, said their new global strategy had the potential to save 50 million lives within less than a decade.
"If we’re to avoid multiple outbreaks of life-threatening diseases like measles, yellow fever and diphtheria, we must ensure routine vaccination services are protected in every country in the world," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
The push comes as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to disrupt essential health services worldwide.
While the situation has improved somewhat from last year, a WHO survey showed more than one third of countries were still seeing disruptions to their routine immunisation services.
And around 60 mass vaccination campaigns were currently postponed in 50 countries, putting around 228 million people, mostly children, at risk for diseases such as measles and polio, the joint statement said.
"Millions of children across the world are likely to miss out on basic vaccines as the current pandemic threatens to unravel two decades of progress in routine immunisation”, Gavi chief Seth Berkley warned.
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