Routine Vaccination Coverage: The North West Region Is Back On Its Feet!

“Before the onset of the Anglophone Crisis in 2016, the North West was always the leading region in Cameroon in terms of vaccination coverage. But the crisis brought us down on our knees,” Dr Cornelius Chebo, the North West Regional Coordinator for the Expanded Programme on Immunisation, EPI, recalls with a tinge of sadness. 

“In 2017, the region had a total vaccination coverage rate of about 46-47 per cent. Progressively, we are standing up on our feet and hope to regain our lost position. Thanks to the World Bank-funded Pandemic Emergency Financing, PEF project. Through Periodic Intensification of Routine Immunisation, PIRI outreach activities, we have been able to raise vaccination coverage to 71 per cent,” Dr Chebo discloses with a broad smile of fulfilment.

Adding: “We hope to attain 80 per cent vaccination coverage by December 2021. Because of the support we have been receiving from the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, the World Health Organisation, WHO and the Ministry of Public Health through the PEF project. This has enabled stakeholders to go to the field, fish out children who missed vaccines and bring them for vaccination,” Dr Cornelius explains.

Starting in 2020, PEF targeted over 300,000 children in the region for Penta 3 vaccination. “I can assure you that over 300,000 children have since been vaccinated in the region. Under PEF, we do not only consider children, pregnant women also receive medication to prevent malaria,” Dr Cornelius notes.

In spite of the glowing results, the North West Regional Coordinator for the Expanded Programme on Immunisation has some worries: “High level insecurity makes it difficult to carry out field ...