“The convergence of a hunger crisis with a growing immunisation gap threatens to create the conditions for a child survival crisis,” the UN said.

Scientists said low vaccine coverage rates had already resulted in preventable outbreaks of diseases like measles and polio. In March 2020, WHO and partners asked countries to suspend their polio eradication efforts amid the accelerating COVID-19 pandemic. There have since been dozens of polio epidemics in more than 30 countries.

In 2021, 24.7 million children missed their first dose of measles vaccine, and a further 14.7 million did not get the essential second dose, the data showed. Coverage was 81 per cent, the lowest since 2008.

“This is particularly tragic as tremendous progress was made in the two decades before the COVID pandemic to improve childhood vaccination rates globally,” said Helen Bedford, a professor of children’s health at University College London, who was not connected to the UN report.

She said the news was shocking but not surprising, noting that immunisation services are frequently an “early casualty” of major social or economic disasters.

David Elliman, a consultant paediatrician at Britain’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, said it was critical to reverse the declining vaccination trend among children.

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“The effects of what happens in one part of the world can ripple out to affect the whole globe,” he said, noting the rapid spread of COVID-19 and more recently, monkeypox.

“Whether we act on the basis of ethics or enlightened self-interest, we must put [children] top of our list of priorities.”

AP, Reuters