![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/UNI680258-1024x681.jpg\")
Carrying their vaccines, a group of health workers cross a flooded area in Gonja sub-district in Northern Ghana.<\/p>\n\tCarrying their vaccines, a group of health workers cross a flooded area in Gonja sub-district in Northern Ghana.<\/p>\n
The huge push to reach children who missed vaccinations during COVID-19 has largely paid off, reaching 18.3 million children \u2013 but plummeting aid and misinformation threaten future childhood immunisations.<\/p>\n
This is according to leaders from the vaccine alliance, Gavi, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, who reported on the \u201cBig Catch-Up\u201d at a media briefing on Thursday \u2013 on the eve of World Vaccination Week.<\/p>\n
Over 100 million vaccines were delivered between 2023 and 2025, and an estimated 12.3 million of the children reached had never been vaccinated, while 15 million had never received a measles vaccine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gavi CEO Dr Sania Nishtar said that, by 2021, coverage of the three-in-one diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP) vaccine had fallen to 78% in lower-income countries, erasing \u201cyears of hard-won gains\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Big Catch Up initiative targeted 36 countries, which accounted for 60% of the world\u2019s zero-dose children, and these countries actively looked for children under five who had missed vaccines.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/UNI940273-1024x683.jpg\")
To protect communities affected by the recent floods in Mozambique, the Ministry of Health is carrying out a preventive cholera vaccination campaign in the districts most prone to cholera outbreaks.<\/p>\n
Twelve of the countries reached more than 60% of their zero-dose children \u2013 Burkina Faso, Democratic People\u2019s Republic of Korea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritania, Niger, Pakistan, Somalia, Togo, Tanzania, and Zambia.<\/p>\n
In total, catch-up reached the equivalent of \u201cfive times the number of children under five in the European Union,\u201d said Nishtar.<\/p>\n
Dr Kate O\u2019Brien, WHO\u2019s immunisation director, said that the initiative also strengthened countries\u2019 immunisation systems, monitoring children\u2019s immunisation status up to the age of five instead of two, and five-year-olds, and strengthening primary health care systems to track newborns.<\/p>\n
Dr Ephrem Lemango, UNICEF\u2019s global chief of immunization, said that maintaining vaccination momentum relies on targeting populations living in fragile and conflict situations, building trust in vaccines and increasing domestic and global financing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Effects of reduced aid
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/UNI785261-1024x683.jpg\")
Vania (4) shows off her pinky finger, indicating she has received the polio vaccine during a vaccination campaign in Herat, western Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe continued decline of official development assistance (ODA) and recent sharp funding cuts to global health have seriously affected the delivery of immunisation services,\u201d Lemango warned.<\/p>\n
ODA cuts have reduced services, including \u201clast-mile\u201d outreach, \u201cbecause so many health workers and supply chains have been supported by these funds\u201d.<\/p>\n
The cuts have affected governments\u2019 ability to provide their part of the co-financing to procure Gavi vaccines. Meanwhile, some countries received donors funds for \u201ctraditional\u201d vaccines \u2013 such as polio, tuberculosis and DTP \u2013 and this has been \u201cconsiderably disrupted\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
ODA cuts have also affected the capacity of the WHO, UNICEF and Gavi to provide technical assistance to governments to deliver immunisation services.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien said that aid cuts have also affected countries\u2019 and international agencies\u2019 ability to react fast to disease outbreaks.<\/p>\n
However, Nishtar said that the \u201csilver lining\u201d has been the rise in Africa of a \u201chealth sovereignty movement\u201d, where heads of state are stressing that they need to be able to deliver basic services through domestic revenue<\/p>\n
Undermining trust<\/p>\n
\u201cTrust has become a prominent predictor of vaccine uptake across countries and populations,\u201d said Lemango. \u201cEven brief exposure to vaccine misinformation likely reduces the willingness to vaccinate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo much anti-vaccine content has its own political economy behind it, where there is financial and political backing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nishtar said that, while there have \u201calways been naysayers\u201d, social media has driven misinformation to new heights.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is really troubling, and a very high concern to all of us, is that there has been ever more politicisation of vaccines and of health,\u201d O\u2019Brien noted.<\/p>\n
\u201cPoliticisation of vaccines should not happen. The world of vaccines should be based on evidence and facts and should be supportive of families and children\u2019s parents or caregivers to provide what is a life saving intervention for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Image Credits: UNICEF<\/a>, UNICEF<\/a>.<\/p>\n Combat the infodemic in health information and support health policy reporting from the global South. Our growing network of journalists in Africa, Asia, Geneva and New York connect the dots between regional realities and the big global debates, with evidence-based, open access news and analysis. To make a personal or organisational contribution click here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carrying their vaccines, a group of health workers cross a flooded area in Gonja sub-district in Northern Ghana.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,137],"class_list":{"0":"post-627598","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}