The number that public-health workers watch most closely is the count of 'zero-dose' children - infants who reach their first birthday having received no vaccine at all [1]. In 2025, that number fell [1].
New estimates from the World Health Organization and UNICEF, drawn from 185 countries, put it at 13.5 million - nearly 750,000 fewer children than the year before [1]. Coverage rose on both ends: about 116 million infants, ninety percent, got their first dose of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine, and about 110 million completed the three-dose series, each figure up a point [1].
The gains came despite conflict and vaccine hesitancy pulling the other way [1]. Nearly three-quarters of a million children who would have gone unprotected a year earlier did not - a gain that will be counted, quietly, in lives [1].
