WHO launches The Big Catch-Up Vaccination Campaign in Nigeria

NIGERIA — The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced its partnership with over 100 countries, including Nigeria, to close the gaps in immunization coverage.

The joint effort of the WHO and the Nigerian government is to reduce the number of zero-dose children in Nigeria by 15% by 2024 and 80% by 2028.

To achieve this objective, the government will lead the initiative through the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA), collaborating with the WHO and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI).

A stakeholders’ meeting held in Abuja aimed to intensify various strategies of the “big-catch-up” campaign and optimize the coverage of immunization programs countrywide.

During the meeting, Dr Faisal Shuaib, the Executive Secretary NPHCDA, emphasized the need for a paradigm shift in the way vaccines reach children.

Figures from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) indicate that from 2019 to 2022, 6.2 million Nigerian children missed out on routine vaccines due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The big-catch-up campaign will adopt various strategies to reach children, including improving and building leadership capacity, increasing monitoring of routine immunization sessions, and enhancing supervision, accountability, and integration of health activities.

WHO will support the strategies, guidelines, and resource optimization mechanisms, monitoring activities at all levels, and guiding the quality and delivery of training for health workers.

In addition to partnering with UNICEF, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Immunization Agenda 2030, WHO will offer guidance on the quality and delivery of outreach services.

The Nigerian government will work with community mobilizers, traditional and religious leaders to raise awareness about the importance of vaccines, and the military to conduct hit-and-run immunization exercises in security-compromised areas.

The Big Catch-up campaign was announced in April 2023 and will begin its rollout in May 2023.

The COVID-19 pandemic overburdened health services, closed clinics, and disrupted imports and exports of medical supplies such as vials, syringes, and other commodities.

Lockdowns and restrictions on travel and access to services, limited financial and human resources, and vaccine hesitancy contributed to the decline in coverage rates.

As per UNICEF numbers, over 25 million children missed at least one vaccination in 2021 alone, resulting in outbreaks of preventable diseases such as cholera, measles, diphtheria, polio, and yellow fever becoming more prevalent and severe.

Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, expressed support for the initiative, stating that “We cannot allow a legacy of the pandemic to be the undoing of many years’ work protecting more and more children from deadly, preventable diseases.”

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