Vaccination rates are a key indicator of the strength of a country’s health care system. Globally, vaccination is a success and has been established as a norm throughout the world. One indicator—coverage with three doses of the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTP) vaccine— reached 86% of the world’s children in 2018, up from 72% in 2000 and 20% in 1980.
Another indicator is measles—a highly contagious infection that can be effectively prevented with two doses of a vaccine that has a long track record of safety and effectiveness—which declined 80% worldwide from 2000 to 2018, saving some 23 million lives. However, in some areas of the developed (Iaccobucci, 2019; Paules et al., 2019) and developing worlds (WHO, 2019c), vaccination rates have fallen, setting up the potential for outbreaks.