New strategies are needed to expand childhood vaccination, says Unicef

Campaigns to encourage childhood vaccination are not enough to reverse the decline in coverage of traditionally applied immunizations. A survey by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) shows that Brazil is among the ten countries with the highest number of children who have not received any dose of the triple bacterial drug, which protects against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough.

For UNICEF’s health officer in Brazil, Stephanie Amaral, it is necessary to go beyond traditional campaigns and adopt other strategies to encourage vaccination.

“We recently had a Ministry of Health campaign against measles and flu that had results, but unfortunately, the target was not reached even in 50% of children who should be vaccinated against measles. The campaign is effective, but it is not enough,” she says.

Stephanie suggests strategies such as the active search for unvaccinated children and the joint involvement of professionals from different areas, such as health and education, to understand the reason for the absence of these minors at vaccination posts.

In an interview with CNN , the UNICEF representative said she believed that the eradication of some diseases, such as measles and polio, caused a false sense of security. “It gives a feeling that vaccination is not that important because we don’t have these diseases,” she says.

“However, low vaccination coverage puts us at risk again, as is the case with measles. We recently had a return of measles to Brazil and we run the risk of a return of polio, which has already been observed in other countries”, he warns.

The specialist says that for the disease to be reintroduced into the country, it is enough for an infected person to come into contact with an unvaccinated child.

The decline in childhood vaccination rates worldwide is the largest continuous drop in approximately 30 years according to official data published by UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO).

The percentage of children who received three doses of the diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough vaccine – a marker of vaccine coverage within and across countries – fell by five percentage points between 2019 and 2021 to 81%.