South Asia could face yet another health emergency if children across the region do not receive their life-saving vaccine shots, the United Nations children’s fund, UNICEF, has warned.
It said nearly a quarter of the world’s unimmunized or partially immunized children – about 4.5 million children – live in South Asia. Almost all of them, 97 per cent, live in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan.
The warning comes during the April 24 to 30 World Immunization Week, which is marked annually in the last week of April. The aim of the week is to promote the use of vaccines to protect people of all ages against disease. Immunization saves millions of lives every year and is widely recognized as one of the world’s most successful and cost-effective health interventions.
Yet nearly 20 million children in the world today are not getting the vaccines they need.
