"While coverage has been slipping since 2015, public health specialists say the speed and scale of the drop in 2024 is without precedent a collapse deepened by Javier Milei's sweeping austerity programme, which has slashed the national health budget and strained the outreach networks that once underpinned Argentina's vaccination successes. The decline is serious. Coverage continues to fall. It has never been this low,"
"Only 46% of five-year-olds received the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine in 2024, compared with about 90% in the 2015-2019 period, SAP's analysis found. The percentage of five-year-olds receiving the polio vaccine booster also fell from 88% to 47% in the same period, while the vaccine against whooping cough, diphtheria and tetanus dropped from 88% to just 46%. We are facing a scenario of collective immunological fragility."
Childhood and adolescent vaccination coverage in Argentina fell to historic lows in 2024, with all vaccines below the 95% herd immunity threshold. Fewer than half of five- and six-year-olds received several essential doses. MMR coverage for five-year-olds fell to 46% from about 90% in 2015–2019; polio booster coverage fell from 88% to 47%, and the whooping cough/diphtheria/tetanus vaccine declined from 88% to 46%. Coverage had been slipping since 2015 and sharply worsened in 2024 after national health budget cuts and strained outreach networks under austerity. Changes in municipal recording partly contributed but did not account for the critical decrease.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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