KATHMANDU, JUNE 12

The World Health Organisation today called for focused efforts to provide lifesaving childhood vaccines in the South-East Asian countries, including Nepal.

WHO said nearly 4.6 million children were reported unvaccinated in 2021 as the countries in Southeast Asia intensify efforts to equal or surpass pre-COVID-19 pandemic vaccination coverage levels.

'The number of unvaccinated children more than doubled from 2 million in 2019 to 4.6 million in the Region by 2021 despite efforts by the countries to maintain or restore routine childhood immunisation. We need to urgently address gaps and challenges aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic,' said Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, regional director WHO South-East Asia.

The Regional Director was addressing the representatives of the ministries of health, national immunisation advisory groups and partner agencies participating in a four-day regional workshop to strengthen routine immunisation capacities in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The catch-up immunisation activities and special campaigns being rolled out by the countries must be reviewed and measures like increasing age limit of target populations must be adopted, if needed, so as to fill the immunity gaps.

'The behavioral and social drivers of immunisation should be identified to guide focused interventions and strategies to engage the communities to accelerate the demand for vaccination,' she said.

The regional director also emphasised on periodic mapping of at-risk populations and for developing actionable plans in a bid to address the gaps in immunisation.

Noting that routine immunisation coverage in the region had been highly variable, the regional director said while several countries have maintained high childhood vaccination coverage even during the COVID-19 pandemic and are now accelerating progress, some others where coverage declined in 2020 but stabilised in 2021 and 2022 can now reach pre-pandemic levels.

'However, there are also countries where coverage continues to be sub-optimal.'

The regional director commended Timor-Leste for introducing pneumococcal vaccine in catch-up campaigns, and Nepal for becoming the fourth country globally in 2022 to introduce typhoid conjugate vaccine.

Dr Khetrapal Singh complimented Bangladesh for restoring immunisation services to the pre-COVID-19 levels by June 2020, India for launching the intensified vaccination drive - Mission Indradhanush, and Indonesia for completing the readiness requirements for use of the novel oral polio vaccine type 2 within a record time of two weeks from the notification of type 2 circulating vaccine-derived polio outbreak in November 2022.

Bhutan, DPR Korea, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Timor-Leste maintained their measles elimination status throughout the COVID-19 response while Sri Lanka and Maldives were certified for eliminating rubella in 2020.

The WHO South-East Asia region continues to be free of wild poliovirus and sustains its maternal and neonatal tetanus elimination status. With persistent effort over the years, routine immunisation coverage in the region had crossed 90 per cent in 2019. The number of zero dose children declined from over 5 million in 2010 to 2 million in 2019.

A version of this article appears in the print on June 13, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.