LONDON - During the COVID-19 epidemic, people all throughout the world lost faith in the value of routine childhood vaccinations against deadly diseases like measles and polio, claims a new UNICEF report.
Between 2019 and 2021, the public's opinion of childhood vaccinations decreased in 52 of the 55 countries surveyed, according to the UN agency.
The United Nations Children's Fund described the findings as a "worrying warning signal" of growing vaccine skepticism due to misinformation, declining public confidence in governments, and political polarization.
In a statement, Catherine Russell, executive director of UNICEF, said, "We cannot allow confidence in routine immunizations to become another victim of the pandemic." "If not, the next wave of deaths could include more kids who have diphtheria, measles, or other diseases that can be avoided."
The FDA cited the shift in perspective as being especially concerning because it followed the most continuous decline in childhood immunization in a generation amid COVID interruptions.
During the epidemic, 67 million kids lost out on one or more potentially life-saving vaccinations, and despite growing outbreaks, efforts to make up for it have so far come to a standstill.
According to the UNICEF report, its annual State of the World's Children report, there were disparities in the picture of vaccine confidence around the world.
Agreement with the statement "vaccines are important for children" decreased by 44% in Papua New Guinea, South Korea, Ghana, Senegal, and Japan, and by more than a third in Ghana, Senegal, and Japan. It decreased by 13.6 percentage points in the US. According to the research, trust in India, China, and Mexico either stayed mostly unchanged or rose.
The report emphasized that vaccine confidence can fluctuate readily and that the findings could not represent a long-term pattern.
The importance of childhood vaccinations was still cited by more than 80% of respondents in nearly half of the countries polled, despite the decline in trust.
The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine's Vaccine Confidence Project gathered the information.