Global vaccination efforts stall, leaving millions of children
vulnerable to preventable diseases
[June 25, 2025]
LONDON (AP) — Efforts to vaccinate children globally have stalled
since 2010, leaving millions vulnerable to tetanus, polio, tuberculosis
and other diseases that can be easily prevented.
Protection from measles in particular dropped in 100 countries between
2010 and 2019, unravelling decades of progress, including in rich
countries that had previously eliminated the highly infectious disease,
according to a new analysis of global vaccination trends published
Tuesday in the journal Lancet.
“After clean water, vaccination is the most effective intervention for
protecting the health of our children,” said Helen Bedford, a professor
of children's health at University College London, who was not connected
to the research. She warned there has been a small but worrying rise in
the number of parents skipping vaccination for their children in recent
years, for reasons including misinformation.
In Britain, Bedford said that has resulted in the largest number of
measles recorded since the 1990s and the deaths of nearly a dozen babies
from whooping cough. Vaccination rates in the U.S. are also falling, and
exemptions from vaccinations are at an all-time high.
After the World Health Organization established its routine immunization
program in 1974, countries made significant efforts to protect children
against preventable and sometimes fatal diseases; the program is
credited with inoculating more than 4 billion children, saving the lives
of 154 million worldwide.
Since the program began, the global coverage of children receiving three
doses of the diphtheria-tetanus-whooping cough vaccine nearly doubled,
from 40% to 81%. The percentage of kids getting the measles vaccine also
jumped from 37% to 83%, with similar increases for polio and
tuberculosis.
But after the COVID-19 pandemic, coverage rates dropped, with an
estimated 15.6 million children missing out on the
diphtheria-tetanus-whooping cough vaccine and the measles vaccine.
Nearly 16 million children failed to get vaccinated against polio and 9
million missed out on the TB vaccine, with the biggest impact in
sub-Saharan Africa. The study was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance.
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A health worker administers a polio vaccine to a child in Karachi,
Pakistan, Jan. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan, File)
 Researchers at the Institute for
Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, who
conducted the analysis, noted that more than half of the world’s
15.7 million unvaccinated children live in just eight countries in
2023: Nigeria, India, Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Indonesia and
Brazil.
Since President Trump has begun to withdraw the U.S. from the WHO
and dismantled the U.S Agency for International Aid, public health
experts have warned of new epidemics of infectious diseases. The
researchers said it was too early to know what impact recent funding
cuts might have on children's immunization rates.
The WHO said there had been an 11-fold spike in measles in the
Americas this year compared to 2024. Measles infections doubled in
the European region in 2024 versus the previous year and the disease
remains common in Africa and Southeast Asia.
“It is in everyone's interest that this situation is rectified,”
said Dr. David Elliman, a pediatrician who has advised the British
government, in a statement. “While vaccine-preventable infectious
diseases occur anywhere in the world, we are all at risk.”
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