Childhood vaccinations: children with no doses decline, but 13.5 million remain

The joint WHO-UNICEF estimates (WUENIC) published in 2026 and relating to the year 2025 show an improvement in global childhood vaccination coverage, accompanied however by persistent imbalances. According to the data, 90% of newborns — around 116 million children — received at least one dose of the DTP vaccine (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis), and 85% completed the full three-dose course scheduled for the first year of life.

The figure most closely followed by observers is that of so-called “zero-dose” children, meaning those who received no vaccination at all in the first twelve months of life: in 2025 this number fell to around 13.5 million, nearly 750,000 fewer than in 2024. This represents progress, but the same estimates indicate that more than half of these children live in fragile settings, affected by conflict or otherwise vulnerable — areas that together are home to around a third of the world’s child population. The gap between the aggregate figure and its geographic distribution therefore remains the main issue: the average improvement does not automatically translate into improvement everywhere, and the areas already most exposed to health risks remain those with the most difficult access to vaccination programmes.

A second element concerns measles. In 2025, 57 countries reported significant outbreaks of the disease, for which global vaccination coverage remains below the 95% threshold considered necessary for herd immunity. This is an indicative measure of the fragility of health systems: measles, being highly contagious, tends to appear precisely where coverage falls below that threshold, making it an early indicator of possible broader declines in routine vaccination.

According to the estimates, the recovery in global vaccination rates comes after the decline recorded during the Covid-19 pandemic, a period in which many routine vaccination programmes were disrupted in several countries. UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell attributed this recovery to the work of governments and health workers on the ground.

It should be noted that the news currently comes from a single primary source — the joint WHO-UNICEF estimates (WUENIC) — picked up by two outlets (ANSA and Dazebaonews): since there is no further independent source that autonomously verifies the figures, no independent confirmation of the data collection methodology is available, which remains that habitually used by the two promoting bodies.

The picture that emerges remains twofold: on one hand, real quantitative progress, with nearly 750,000 more children reached by at least one vaccination compared with the previous year; on the other, a persistent concentration of the remaining problem in the hardest-to-reach areas, where conflict and institutional fragility make immunisation programmes more costly and less stable. The measles safety threshold, not reached at the global level, remains the indicator against which future WUENIC surveys will likely be measured.