Jafarasa Sadat, the provincial lead of the Expanded Programme on Immunization, administers the last shot of the day to Jauado Alifa, a community leader at Malica, a settlement for internally displaced people in Mozambique. ©WHOA €16 million grant to WHO from the European Union’s ECHO (European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations) has helped raise COVID-19 vaccination rates in a group of countries in Africa where coverage levels were among the lowest in the world.A major objective of the push is to make COVID-19 vaccination available to vulnerable groups such as the elderly, as well as populations displaced by conflict or natural disasters.
The support is also building countries’ capacity to carry out vaccination programs, which can be leveraged to protect people from many other diseases.With the extra boost that ECHO funds provided, Mozambique has now vaccinated nearly all its adults, and the other 14 countries are making strides that include raising vaccination rates, training health workers, developing strategy and policy and digitalizing data-collection systems.The 18-month project began in June 2021 and runs through the end of this year, working in Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan.WHO’s effort is one piece of the larger EU Humanitarian Initiative in support of COVID-19 vaccination in Africa, which is providing €100 million to 41 projects in 34 countries.
Many other organizations are participating in the initiative, including the International Organization for Migration, the International Committee of the Red Cross, UNICEF and the World Food Programme.In this