© WHO/Hedinn Halldorsson In 2003, the World Health Assembly set a target for vaccination coverage among older adults of 75 percent. WHO: only four European countries have reached their flu vaccination target Healthcare
Over the past 15 years, countries in the European Region of the World Health Organization (WHO) have made real progress in influenza vaccination. Yet new research published in The Lancet Regional Health – Europe on the occasion of European Immunization Week 2026 shows how uneven this progress remains.
Since the 2008-2009 season, the number of vaccine doses distributed throughout the region has doubled, and by 2021-2022. Each Member State has established a national influenza vaccination program. The region, which includes countries in Europe and Central Asia, is thus the first of the six WHO regions to achieve this goal.
In 2022–2023, high-income countries in the European Region provided an average of 139.9 vaccine doses per 1,000 people. In lower-middle-income countries, the figure was 14.6 doses. Immunization rates among older adults—who account for 70 percent of all influenza-related deaths worldwide—were 55 percent in high-income countries and just 5 percent in lower-middle-income countries. diseases.
Missed opportunity
In 2003, the World Health Assembly set a vaccination coverage target for older adults of 75 percent. Two decades later, only four countries—Belarus, Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom—have reached that target.
“These figures clearly show who we are protecting and who we are leaving behind, and unfortunately there is a lot of inequality here,” said WHO regional director Hans Kluge. “A tenfold gap in vaccine availability within one region should be a concern for every health minister in the European Region. But the good news is that this problem can be solved. We know that providing free access to vaccines removes one of the main barriers to uptake. We know that combating misinformation and building public trust drives demand. And we know that countries will not have to solve this problem alone, because that is precisely the task of WHO/Europe – to help them close the gap.”
Gaps in data
However, gaps in the availability of monitoring data continue to be a serious problem. All countries in the region now recommend that healthcare workers receive influenza vaccinations, but less than two-thirds provide data on whether healthcare workers actually get vaccinated. In addition, less than one-third of countries provide data on immunization for people with chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer, populations at risk of severe influenza illness. “There is encouraging evidence of what we can actually achieve,” Kluge added. – Influenza vaccination rates among older people in the European Region increased during the first winter of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021) and appear to have continued in subsequent seasons. This trend contrasts with declines observed in other regions of the world.”
Some countries are creating programs from scratch. In 2025, Tajikistan purchased a batch of influenza vaccines for the first time, sending them to medical workers most at risk of infection. The country plans to double vaccine orders by 2030 to ensure not only the protection of health workers, but also the health system’s ability to respond to future pandemics.