Childhood Killers In Africa Don’t Care If Covid Is Priority

One of the Covid vaccination campaign’s risk has been its displacing immunizations against childhood killers in developing countries. As the WSJ noted, “millions of children have missed essential vaccinations [going on two years] because of lockdowns” & as the belated Covid vax effort gears up it “portends another year of disruptions.”

Note: Those “other” diseases don’t care about the tough choices we have to make & the stakes are stark: “Before the onset of the pandemic, countries around the world had taken significant strides in alleviating the suffering brought by the big childhood killers. Before vaccinations began to spread through the developing world in the 1980s, measles alone caused the deaths of around 2.6 million people each year, mostly children under the age of five.“ WHO says since 2000, deaths from measles have fallen by 94% thanks to rollout of readily available & effective vaccines.

But, the Covid outbreak has caused the vaccination drive to lose momentum, the WSJ notes, “potentially opening the way for future epidemics of measles & other diseases that could extract a greater toll among children than coronavirus. As in the US, then, that leaves policy makers with “difficult decisions over which [vaccine &/or disease] to give priority to.” How we doin’ so far?

Davd Soul