KARACHI: Life-saving childhood vaccination coverage has stalled in recent decades, leaving millions of children at risk, with Pakistan having the highest number of zero-dose children in South Asia after India, a new study by the British medical journal Lancet warns.

An analysis by the Global Burden of Disease Vaccine Coverage Collaborators, highlighted in a Lancet press release, shows that childhood vaccination rates have stagnated and vaccine coverage varies widely over the last two decades, despite 50 years of progress, Dawn.com reported.

The journal added that `these challenges have been further exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, leaving millions of children vulnerable to preventable diseases and death`.

Since its 1974 inception, the World Health Organisation`s (WHO) Essential Programme onImmunisation (EPI) averted an estimated 154 million child deaths worldwide.

The study, `Global, regional, and national trends in routine childhood vaccination coverage from 1980 to 2023 with forecasts to 2030: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023,` warns that immunisation targets for 2030 won`t be met without major equity improvements.

The WHO set these ambitious goals in 2019 through its Immunisation Agenda 2030.

According to 2023 data, more than half of the world`s 15.7m unvaccinated children lived in just eight countries, with 53 per cent in subSaharan Africa and 13pc in South Asia.

`Large numbers of children remain under and unvaccinated,` said senior study author Dr.

Jonathan Mosser of the University of Washington`s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

The Covid-19 pandemic significantly worsened global coverage rates for original EPIrecommended vaccines, with declines starting sharply in 2020. An estimated 15.6m children missed the full three doses of the diphtheriatetanus-pertussis (DTP) vaccine or a measles vaccine between 2020 and 2023.