North Korea has launched a nationwide vaccination campaign for children and pregnant women with the support of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), years after they missed out on essential vaccines due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The campaign aims to inoculate over 800,000 children and 120,000 pregnant women with life-saving vaccines, including those for diphtheria, measles, rubella, and hepatitis, UNICEF said in a release Tuesday.

“This campaign is a major milestone in our efforts to vaccinate every child in the DPRK and protect them from common childhood diseases,” said Roland Kupka, UNICEF’s acting representative for the country. DPRK stands for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

According to UNICEF, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant decline in immunization rates within the reclusive regime.

The rates — which had exceeded 96 percent before the pandemic — dropped to below 42 percent by mid-2021, leaving countless children at risk of deadly diseases.

In July, over 4 million doses of essential vaccines were delivered to North Korea to commence the vaccination program, UNICEF said.

Of them, 2 million doses will be used in the current catch-up vaccination campaign, while the remainder will be distributed to health centers nationwide to support routine immunization efforts.

Between 2021 and 2023, UNICEF supported three previous catch-up vaccination campaigns in North Korea, reaching nearly 1.3 million children who had missed key vaccinations during the peak of the pandemic, the agency said.

Source: Yonhap News Agency