Reaching Zero-Dose Children Advocacy Project

This project worked to: 
 

• Promote awareness of and engagement with effective practices by global health and country-level stakeholders and practitioners;
• Strengthen integrated services delivery of national immunisation programmes, and augmented service delivery to zero-dose children; and
• Facilitate multi-sectoral and/or cross-country dialogue among immunisation stakeholders.

The following activities were undertaken:

Webinars
The project held two webinars to discuss strategies and lessons on reaching zero-dose children to increase immunisation coverage globally: 
 

Webinar 1: Strategies to Reach Zero Dose Children in Fragile States and Cross-border Contexts in Africa - Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, in partnership with two consortia, is implementing the Zero-Dose Immunization Programme (ZIP) to support governments in the Sahel and Horn of Africa regions to reach zero-dose children and increase vaccine coverage within their countries. Through this project, Gavi is implementing a new approach by partnering with non-traditional partners such as non-governmental organisation/civil society organisations (NGOs/CSOs) to reach zero-dose children in areas that governments are not able to reach due to challenges such as accessibility in cross-border settings and conflict areas.

Hosted by CORE Group and Gavi, this webinar featured experts who discussed the importance of reaching zero-dose children and the ways in which addressing the challenges in reaching communities with immunisation interventions could diminish disease outbreaks and health system disruptions. The webinar provided a platform for discussions on innovative ways to reach zero-dose children beyond traditional government partners in fragile contexts. In addition, the discussion sought to understand how ZIP plans to ensure that zero-dose children receive a full suite of life-saving vaccines, rather than a single dose. 
 

Click here to view the webinar recording, and access speaker bios, the presentation slides, and a webinar Q&A sheet.  

Webinar 2: Immunization and Integration - Country-to-Country Learning and Sharing of Success Stories - This webinar highlighted a few of the CORE Group's membership organisations that have demonstrated successes in their immunisation and integration efforts to reach zero-dose children: 
 

• Pathfinder: talked about their project integrating immunisation and reproductive, maternal, and infant health services in Tanzania and Burundi. This project focused on using immunisation as a gateway to introduce family planning and reproductive counselling to new mothers, and it implemented mobile clinics in order to integrate accessible services at a community level.
• WaterAid: discussed its Integration of Hygiene Behavior Change into Immunization Program, which is a government-backed project integrating hygiene counselling sessions with routine immunisation services in Nepal. As a result of the programme, immunisation and basic hygiene behaviours and systems improved by 51% after just one year of implementation.
• Save the Children: shared lessons learned from their 10-year Primary Health Care programme in Luang Prabang Laos, which was in its final year of implementation in 2022. A key activity under this project was supporting the Government of Laos to conduct integrated reproductive maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health (RMNCAH) outreach in hard-to-reach and remote villages.
• Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI): presented a pilot intervention in Cameroon to improve the timeliness of administration of Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) and oral poliomyelitis vaccine (OPV) at birth and to support the roll-out of the hepatitis B birth dose (HepB-BD) vaccine. The trial intervention to improve the timeliness of administration of the current birth dose vaccines (BCG and OPV) demonstrated a substantial increase in the proportion of children receiving both OPV and BCG within 24 hours of birth - a 47% and 46% absolute increase respectively between baseline and endline.

Click here to view a recording of this webinar and to download a synopsis of the webinar.  

Animation Video
The project produced what was intended to be an easy-to-understand animation as an advocacy tool that health sector actors could use to mobilise departments and ministries of health at the country level to reach zero-dose children in their country-specific health programmes. The animation was made available in different languages (English, Kiswahili, French, and Arabic) for multi-country dissemination to community health and global health stakeholders. Click here to access this video in all four languages.

Roundtable Discussions
Roundtable discussions were held with traditional and non-traditional immunisation partners in order to facilitate multi-sectoral and/or cross-country dialogue among immunisation stakeholders and to strengthen integrated service delivery of national immunisation programmes and augmented service delivery to zero-dose children.

Data indicate that 25 million children around the world missed out on one or more doses of life-saving vaccines in 2021. Of those children, 18 million have never received a single dose of vaccines. This vulnerable cohort, known as zero-dose children, has not received a single vaccine since birth, resulting in high under-five mortality rates in most countries. According to WHO/UNICEF Estimates of National Immunization Coverage (WUENIC) data, over 5.2 million zero-dose children live across 11 countries clustered in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa. The COVID-19 pandemic, having a significant impact, threatens to reverse two decades of progress. (Source: CORE Group).