Washington - (AFP) - Immunization against measles, a potentially fatal disease, has been declining worldwide since the COVID-19 pandemic, putting tens of millions of children at risk, an international report warns.

"For three years we have been sounding the alarm about declining vaccination rates and increasing risks to children's health around the world," Ephrem Tekle Limangu, in charge of vaccination programs at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), said in a statement.

"We have a narrow window to make up for" missed vaccination doses, he added.

In turn, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, "immunization programs have been seriously affected."

"Behind every statistic in this report is a child at risk of contracting a preventable disease," he added.

According to the joint report issued by the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2021, about 40 million children missed a dose of the measles vaccine (25 million missed the first dose and 14.7 million missed the second dose).

As a result, global coverage of first-dose measles vaccination has fallen to its lowest level since 2008.

Among the countries with the largest number of unvaccinated children against measles are Nigeria, India, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia and Indonesia.

According to the report, it is estimated that the number of people infected with measles in 2021 reached nine million, of whom 128,000 died.
Last year, measles outbreaks spread to 22 countries, most of them in the Middle East and Africa.

In April, the World Health Organization warned that reported measles cases increased by nearly 80% in the first two months of 2022 compared to the same period last year.

"There is no time to lose," said Elizabeth Cousins, chair of the United Nations Foundation. "We must act urgently to ensure that these life-saving vaccines reach every child."

Measles is a highly contagious viral disease that has no cure but can be prevented with two vaccine doses.

Measles causes a high fever and rash, and is contagious over a four-day period before and after symptoms appear.

Although the symptoms of this disease are often benign, they can be dangerous at other times, as they may lead to complications in the respiratory (pneumonia) and nervous (encephalitis) systems, especially in people who suffer from poor health.