WHO: Only Four European Countries Have Achieved the Flu Vaccination Target

April 27, 2026 Health injury

Since the 2008-2009 season, the number of vaccine doses distributed throughout the region has doubled, and by 2021-2022, each member state had adopted a national influenza vaccination program. Thus, the region, which includes countries of Europe and Central Asia, was the first among six WHO regions to achieve this goal.

In 2022-2023, countries with a high vaccination coverage in the European region provided on average 139.9 vaccine doses per 1000 people. In countries with vaccination coverage below average, this indicator was 14.6 doses. The immunization indicator of elderly people — the proportion in which 70 percent of all cases of deaths related to influenza occur — worldwide was 55 percent in countries with a high vaccination coverage and only 5 percent in countries with below-average coverage.

Seasonal flu annually claims up to 650 thousand lives worldwide and causes up to five million severe cases of illness.

Missed opportunity

In 2003, the World Health Assembly established the target indicator of vaccinating persons aged over 65 at a level of 75 percent. Two decades later, only four countries — Belarus, Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom — have achieved this indicator.

“These numbers clearly show whom we protect and whom we leave unattended, and unfortunately, this speaks of inequality,” said Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director. “A tenfold gap in vaccine accessibility within a single region should cause 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 eliminates one of the main obstacles to their use. We know that combating misinformation and strengthening public trust stimulate demand.”And we know that countries will not have to solve this problem alone, because it is precisely in this that the task of the UNEP-WOZ lies – to help them reduce this gap.

Spaces in data

Meanwhile, gaps in the availability of monitoring data remain a serious problem. Currently, all countries in the region recommend that medical workers get vaccinated against the flu, but less than two-thirds of them provide data on whether medical workers actually receive vaccinations. In addition, less than one-third of countries provide data on the immunization of people with chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer, that is, those population groups at risk of severe flu.

“There is encouraging evidence of what we can realistically achieve,” Klyuge added. “The level of influenza vaccination among the elderly in the European region increased during the first winter affected by the pandemic conditions.COVID-19(2020-2021), and, apparently, continued into the subsequent seasons. This trend contrasts with the decline in indicators observed in other regions of the world.

Some countries create programs from scratch. In 2025, Tajikistan purchased for the first time a batch of flu vaccines, sending them to medical workers most at risk of infection. The country plans to double the volume of vaccine orders by 2030 in order to ensure not only the protection of medical personnel but also the healthcare system’s ability to respond to future pandemics.