Fewer vaccinations, more disease: outbreaks of preventable illness in SA
South Africa is facing a public health crisis as childhood vaccination rates have plummeted, leading to outbreaks of preventable diseases like measles. The health department is urging parents to resume routine immunizations to restore herd immunity.
Why it matters
Declining vaccination coverage threatens to reverse years of progress in infant mortality reduction and poses a significant risk to community health.
The health department is calling on parents and the public to take urgent action to halt declining immunisation coverage to help to prevent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases.
The worsening vaccination level in South Africa could threaten to reverse decades of public health gains, including significant reductions in under-five and infant mortality achieved since the mid-2000s.
The proportion of unvaccinated infants (children under one year receiving no vaccinations) has increased from 12.1% in 2017 to an alarming 36.3% between January 2026 and April 2026 — effectively tripling the number of completely unvaccinated children and leaving hundreds of thousands of infants at risk of life-threatening illnesses.
Routine coverage has fallen severely across all 52 districts in the country. First-dose coverage among children under one year dropped from 87% in 2021 to 67% in 2025. Coverage of the hexavalent (6-in-1) infant vaccine declined from 87% to 60.5% over the same period.
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