Africa needs to vaccinate 33 million children to put progress back on track.

Brazzaville, 20 April 2023 - An estimated 33 million children will need to be vaccinated in Africa between 2023 and 2025 to put the continent back on track to achieve the 2030 global immunization goals that include reducing morbidity and mortality from vaccine-preventable diseases, an analysis by World Health Organization (WHO) finds.

The unprecedented impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on routine immunization services has driven up the number of zero-dose and under-immunized children, rising by 16% between 2019 and 2021 and pushing the cumulative total (2019-2021) to around 33 million, which represents nearly half the global figure, according to estimates by WHO and UNICEF.

'The pandemic has seriously set back the region's vaccination efforts and left millions of children vulnerable to vaccine-preventable diseases that can cause serious illness and even death,' said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. 'As countries strive to emerge from the long shadow of COVID-19, we cannot afford to lose further ground. Every effort must be made to ensure every child has access to essential vaccines.'

Without renewed political will and intensified efforts by governments, it is estimated that vaccination coverage in Africa will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2027.

The pandemic has seriously set back the region's vaccination efforts and left millions of children vulnerable to vaccine-preventable diseases that can cause serious illness and even death

This year, African Vaccination Week and World Immunization Week, from 24-30 April, is being marked under the theme 'The Big Catch-Up'. This is a global push by WHO and partners to intensify efforts to reach children who missed vaccinations, as well as to restore and strengthen routine immunization programmes.

The 'Big Catch-Up' campaign builds on efforts to advance countries towards the goals of Immunization Agenda 2030, a strategy endorsed during the WHO World Health Assembly in 2020. It seeks to reduce mortality and morbidity from vaccine-preventable diseases, ensure equitable access to vaccines and strengthen immunization within primary health care.

To urgently scale up coverage and protect children, WHO and partners are supporting 10 priority African countries-which are among the top 20 countries globally with the highest numbers of zero-dose children-to carry out catch-up routine vaccination campaigns.

African governments and healthcare workers made heroic efforts during an...