Geneva [Switzerland], July 15 (Sputnik/ANI): The world has seen a dramatic decline in the number of children vaccinated during the novel coronavirus pandemic and can experience a surge in preventable diseases, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said in a joint statement on Wednesday.

"The World Health Organisation and UNICEF warned today of an alarming decline in the number of children receiving life-saving vaccines around the world," the release said.

"This is due to disruptions in the delivery and uptake of immunization services caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to new data by WHO and UNICEF, these disruptions threaten to reverse hard-won progress to reach more children and adolescents with a wider range of vaccines, which has already been hampered by a decade of stalling coverage," it added.

Data compiled by the WHO and UNICEF on vaccine coverage over the last year demonstrates that hard-won advances, such as the expansion of the HPV vaccine to 106 countries, are at risk of lapsing, the release said.

"For example, preliminary data for the first four months of 2020 points to a substantial drop in the number of children completing three doses of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP3)," the release said. "This is the first time in 28 years that the world could see a reduction in DTP3 coverage - the marker for immunization coverage within and across countries."WHO and UNICEF said that some 30 measles vaccination campaigns are at risk of termination because of the novel coronavirus pandemic and such a development could lead to future outbreaks this year and beyond.

UNICEF and WHO said they conducted a survey in collaboration with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which revealed three-quarters of the 82 countries that responded reported COVID-19-related disruptions in their immunisation programs as of May 2020.

The chances that a child born today will be vaccinated with all the globally recommended vaccines by the age of 5 is less than 20 per cent, the release said.

"In 2019, nearly 14 million children missed out on life-saving vaccines such as measles and DTP3. Most of these children live in Africa and are likely to lack access to other health services," the release said.

Two-thirds of them are concentrated in ten middle-and low-income countries: Angola, Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Philippines, and children in middle-income countries account for an increasing share of the burden, the release added. (Sputnik/ANI)