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Fewer children around the world are getting vaccinated, and health experts say that’s putting millions of young lives at risk, even in countries like Cyprus, where coverage is still high.
A major new global study published in The Lancet warns that years of progress in protecting children from deadly diseases like measles, polio, and tuberculosis is starting to unravel. The reasons are familiar: the impact of COVID-19, rising poverty in many regions, misinformation about vaccines, and deep global inequalities.
The report, which covers 204 countries and territories between 1980 and 2023, shows that vaccines have saved about 154 million children’s lives over the past five decades. In many places, the number of children vaccinated against diseases like diphtheria, polio, and measles has doubled.
But in the last few years, that progress has started to slow down or even reverse.
Before COVID-19, vaccine coverage was already falling in some regions, especially in parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. When the pandemic hit, things got worse: from 2020 to 2023, nearly 13 million children didn’t receive even one vaccine, and more than 15 million missed key follow-up doses.
In 2023 alone, over half of all children who missed vaccines lived in just eight countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
The effects are already showing. Measles cases in Europe jumped tenfold last year. In the United States, over 1,000 measles cases were confirmed last month, more than the total for all of last year. Polio, once close to being eradicated, is now back in places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Papua New Guinea.
“This should be a wake-up call,” said Jonathan Moser, one of the study’s lead authors. “Diseases we thought were under control are finding new ways to spread.”
Health experts in Cyprus say the country is still doing relatively well, with strong childhood immunization programs and access to vaccines. But the danger, they warn, is becoming complacent.
