World Immunization Week 2023: Somalia determined to tackle ‘big catch-up’ – Somalia

Mogadishu, 24 April 2023 – The Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH), in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), has launched World Immunization Week under the global theme of ‘The Big Catch’. (WIW) was held. We are determined to strengthen primary health care and routine immunization across the country and ensure that no one is left behind.”

World Immunization Week (WIW) 2023 has been given the theme of ‘big catch-up’ as it is observed during the global COVID-19 pandemic. WIW was first endorsed by the World Health Assembly (the decision-making body of WHO) in May 2012, the same year the first World Immunization Week was held in WHO’s 180 Member States.

Federal Health Minister Dr Ali Haji took this opportunity to say that WHO and UNICEF are coordinating and working with multiple partners to help his government catch up on progress lost in necessary immunizations as a result of the pandemic. Thank you for your support. Acknowledging that the worst drought in history has hit the country, resulting in massive population displacements and disease outbreaks, Dr Haji said: “In line with this year’s theme of ‘Big The Ministry will build a strong immunization delivery system, maintain the progress achieved over the past few years in preventing setbacks in childhood immunization in this country, and more importantly, to ensure that we are back on track. to accelerate the “The Big Catch Up” campaign of More people, especially children, are being vaccinated and protected from preventable diseases. ”

According to UNICEF and WHO estimates, Somalia’s routine immunization coverage is low compared to other countries, further affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Ministry of Health has made progress to close these yawning gaps in immunization during 2022 by scaling up efforts to strengthen routine immunization across the country, in partnership with WHO and UNICEF.

Dr Mamnur Rahman Malik, WHO Representative for Somalia, noted that the pandemic has hampered routine immunization in Somalia. The pandemic has disrupted essential immunization services in the country, and routine immunization coverage could drop by more than 20% if lost progress cannot be quickly caught up. He added, “WHO is working with the Ministry of Health and UNICEF to develop an immunization recovery plan to catch up with all children who have missed routine immunizations in the last three years.” We are planning a “big catch-up” by formulating years, including all women of childbearing age and adults. This is an opportunity to return immunization coverage to pre-pandemic levels, and by working with our partners, we can do just that. ”

FMoH, WHO and UNICEF to jointly conduct 4 immunization activities, 5 polio campaigns, 8 COVID-19 campaigns and nationwide measles, tOPV, vitamin A and deworming campaigns in 2022 Did. In addition, WHO has deployed more than 2,100 Community Health Workers (CHWs) and UNICEF has deployed more than 6,000 social mobilizers across the country to disseminate health messages and reach more than 4.5 million people with immunizations. Helping to trace and immunize children who weren’t killed. Community health workers are working to find and register missed children and pregnant women and refer them to nearby health facilities and outreach her sessions.

“UNICEF is supporting health systems to increase routine immunization and integrated health and nutrition services for children in Somalia, especially as coverage is low in hard-to-reach areas. said UNICEF Deputy Chief Nejimuddin Kedir Bilal. “We are committed to continuing to support the Ministry of Health to increase demand and acceptance of vaccines by communities. Strengthen supply chain management systems for vaccines and supplies. To track zero-dose children. to modernize the management information system to

Through joint efforts by FMoH, WHO and UNICEF during the last integrated campaign, more than 3.2 million children under the age of five were vaccinated against measles and 3.5 million against polio. I was. In 2022, the immunization program will identify and vaccinate more than 84,500 dose-free children and deploy an integrated outreach team to prevent tetanus in approximately 30,000 women of childbearing age. Diphtheria toxoid (Td2) vaccination was performed. Somalia has also managed to achieve the milestone of fully vaccinating her COVID-19 to more than 41.7% of her adult population in 2022.

Note to editors:

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, there has been a significant decline in childhood vaccination globally, putting millions more children at risk of vaccine-preventable diseases. The continuing decline in vaccination coverage since then may be the result of many factors, including the strain on the health system caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. These stresses have led to challenges with his chain of supply, human resources, and funding. Increased vaccine misinformation, disinformation, and hesitation may also have contributed to the decline in some countries. Unless urgent action is taken to reverse the loss of immunization programs, the risk of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases could persist, especially in countries like Somalia.