Gavi announced in July 2024 that it has allocated nearly 200 million additional vaccine doses to contribute to the vaccination of around 50% of children in Gavi countries missed during the pandemic. This was achieved in collaboration with UNICEF and WHO and follows the approval of US$ 290 million by the Board last year in support of the “Big Catch-Up” initiative. With the doses allocated, all country requests that were received during the application window can progress to the implementation stage. Almost 32 million doses have already been shipped to 13 countries; a further 10 million are set to follow by the end of the month.
The Big Catch-Up
The Big Catch-Up initiative was launched by partners in April 2023 to address the decline in childhood vaccination rates that was observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent immunisation coverage data for 2023 revealed variations across Gavi implementing countries; although there were improvements in 22 countries, these were “offset by sizeable declines” in other countries. Immunisation coverage in Gavi-supported countries “remained stable”, despite a growing birth cohort. However, the data also suggest an increase in the number of ‘zero-dose children’ in Gavi implementing countries.
Gavi’s “extraordinary” catch-up effort seeks to close immunisation gaps, restore immunisation coverage to pre-pandemic levels, and strengthen immunisation systems. Big Catch-Up funding is already allowing countries to identify and immunise unimmunised children, especially in hard-to-reach areas. Gavi offers the example of the Syrian Arab Republic, which rolled out a campaign to reach around 360,000 children from April 2024. Another example is Somalia, which is using the support to address some of the country’s widest gaps, administering measles vaccine, inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV), and diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis-containing vaccine.
The list of antigens for Big Catch-Up activities is:
- Pentavalent
- HPV
- IPV
- Measles
- MR
- MMR
- MenA
- PCV
- ROTA
- Yellow Fever
Building resilience
Thabani Maphosa, Managing Director of Country Programmes Delivery at Gavi, commented that “lower-income countries made unprecedented efforts to vaccinate their populations” during the pandemic. However, this emergency response “strained their health systems”.
“Now, our priority is twofold: help countries regain lost ground in routine immunisation coverage and build more resilient and equitable vaccination programmes for the future.”
Gavi is “acting swiftly” with partners to support this “critical public health mission”. Maphosa states that “strong immunisation systems are the foundation for combating disease outbreaks and saving lives”.
For more on the vaccine community’s role in regaining lost ground, why not join us at the Congress in Barcelona this October? Don’t forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletters here.
