WHO
A multi-year effort to address global declines in childhood vaccination has delivered more than 100 million vaccine doses to more than 18 million children across Africa and Asia, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced today.
Initiated in 2023 by the WHO, UNICEF, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the “Big Catch-Up” is focused on closing the vaccine equity gap in children ages 1 to 5 in 36 countries. Of the 18.3 million who received vaccines from 2023 to 2025, 12.3 million had not yet received any vaccine, and 15 million had not received a measles vaccine, the WHO said.
Although millions of children in low-income countries miss out on vaccines every year, the problem was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted national immunization programs and added millions more “zero-dose” children. The WHO said the initiative addressed this issue by leveraging routine immunization programs to reach 1- to 5-year-olds who had missed out on infant vaccines.
The participating countries also trained health workers to identify, screen, and vaccinate missed children as part of routine care.
Initiative on track to reach 21 million kids
The initiative concluded in March and is on track to meet its goal of catching up 21 million undervaccinated children, the WHO said.
“By protecting children who missed out on vaccinations because of disruptions to health services caused by COVID-19, the Big Catch-Up has helped to undo one of the pandemic’s major negative consequences,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, said in a press release. “The success of the Big Catch-Up is a testament to health workers and national immunization programmes, which are now better equipped to find and vaccinate children missed by routine services.”
But UNICEF Director Catherine Russell, JD, warned that many more children remain “out of reach.”
“The gains made through the Big Catch-Up must be sustained through investment in strong, reliable immunisation systems, especially at a time where measles is resurging,” she said.