According to the United Nations children’s agency, some 67 million children around the world partially or completely missed routine vaccinations between 2019 and 2021 because of lockdowns and the disruption to healthcare caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Afghan Voice Agency(AVA)_Monitoring, “More than a decade of hard-earned gains in routine childhood immunization have been eroded,” UNICEF warned in its annual State of the World’s Children report which was released on Wednesday, warning that getting back on track would be “challenging”.

Of the 67 million children whose vaccinations were “severely disrupted”, 48 million missed out on routine vaccines entirely, the agency said.

Vaccine coverage among children declined in 112 countries and the percentage of children vaccinated worldwide slipped 5 percentage points to 81 percent, the lowest since 2008. Africa and South Asia were particularly hard-hit.