India, July 15 -- India has made significant improvement in covering zero dose children as a part of national immunization coverage with the number of children who never received a single dose of any vaccines reducing by 43% - from 1.6 million in 2023 to 0.9 million in 2024- according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and Unicef global immunization estimates 2024 released on Tuesday, adding there were still 14.3 million zero dose children globally.

In the South Asia region, there has been a 27 per cent reduction in the number of zero dose children, decreasing from 2.5 million to 1.8 million in a year.

In 2024, 92 per cent of the infants in the region received their third dose of the Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis (DTP) vaccine ...