(WXYZ) — The World Health Organization has named vaccine hesitancy one of the 10 biggest threats to global health in 2019. According to the WHO, the anti-vaccine movement threatens to reverse progress made in tackling vaccine-preventable diseases.
The WHO said that measles has seen a 30 percent increase in cases globally, and not all are due to vaccine hesitancy, but says the reasons are complex.
The organization has a vaccines advisory group "identified complacency, inconvenience in accessing vaccines, and lack of confidence are key reasons underlying hesitancy.
They said that they will work this year to eliminate cervical cancer worldwide by increasing coverage of the HPV vaccine, and 2019 may also be the year when transmission of wild poliovirus is stopped in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Other threats to global health in 2019, according to the WHO, are: Air pollution and climate change, noncommunicable diseases, global influenza pandemic, fragile and vulnerable settings, antimicrobial resistance, Ebola and other high-threat pathogens, weak primary health care and dengue.
