Routine Vaccination Coverage - Worldwide, 2023.

Abstract

In 2020, the World Health Assembly endorsed the Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030), a 10-year strategy to reduce vaccine-preventable disease (VPD)-associated morbidity and mortality. IA2030 goals include improving equitable vaccination coverage, halving the number of unimmunized (zero-dose) children, and increasing the introduction of new and underutilized vaccines. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted health systems worldwide, hindering years of childhood vaccination achievements and putting global public health goals at risk. This report presents trends in World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF routine vaccination coverage estimates through 2023 across the 194 WHO member countries. During 2022-2023, global coverage with the first and third doses of diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis-containing vaccine (DTPcv) (89% and 84%, respectively) and the first dose of measles-containing vaccine (83%) stagnated and remained lower than prepandemic levels. The 31 WHO member countries with fragile, conflict-affected, and vulnerable (FCV) settings include approximately one half of the world's 14.5 million children who did not receive the first DTPcv dose. The introduction of new and underutilized vaccines, such as a second MCV dose in the African Region, has improved countries' overall protection against VPDs. Accelerating country-specific routine immunization and catch-up vaccination programs to reach unvaccinated and incompletely vaccinated children, especially those living in FCV settings, is critical to reducing morbidity and mortality associated with VPDs.