The largest catch-up vaccination campaign has succeeded in vaccinating 18 million children

“The Big Catch-Up” initiative, launched by the WHO and UNICEF to reverse the decline in vaccination rates caused by the pandemic, has administered more than 100 million doses to some 18.3 million children aged between 1 and 5 in 36 countries. Of these, 12.3 million had never received any vaccinations and 15 million had never been immunised against measles.

The programme is close to achieving its target of reaching 21 million children who are unvaccinated or have an incomplete vaccination schedule. To achieve this, countries have put in place sustainable systems to identify, screen and vaccinate older children who had not been reached by routine programmes, as well as training health workers and working with communities and civil society to sustain these gains in the future. Nevertheless, agencies warn that every year 14.3 million babies are still not receiving any vaccines at all through the usual immunisation systems.