"The Big Catch-up"
World Immunization Week, celebrated in the last week of April, aims to highlight the collective action needed to protect people from vaccine-preventable diseases.
In just three years, the COVID-19 pandemic cost the world 30 years progress on immunization, with significant repercussions for the life-long health of millions of children and their communities. Health care workers had to respond to the pandemic and orchestrate the most complex vaccine introduction in history. At the same time, health systems tried to maintain routine health service, including the essential immunization programme.
Despite best efforts, childhood immunization coverage for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP3) decreased from 94% to 90% between 2020 to 2021 in the Western Pacific Region, and many adolescents missed vaccinations for HPV because of health services disruptions, school closures and postponements of immunization campaigns. Inadequate coverage levels have already resulted in avoidable outbreaks of measles in the past 12 months, underscoring the vital role of immunization in keeping children, adolescents, adults, and societies healthy.
Monumental efforts will be required to reach universal levels of coverage and to prevent outbreaks. As many countries are already integrating or are planning to integrate COVID-19 vaccinations into their vaccination service delivery, it will be essential to strengthen primary health care to reach missed children, restore essential immunization coverage to 2019 levels, and build lasting protection in communities and countries in the Western Pacific.
WHO, in collaboration with countries, Gavi, UNICEF and other global immunization partners, are joining forces this year to launch “The Big Catch-up”, a global immunization push that aims to support efforts to catch up, restore and strengthen routine immunization worldwide.
The campaign aims to:
(Catch-up) Reach children who missed vaccination during the pandemic in 2020-2022 (includes the 2019 zero-dose and under-immunized children as part of the accumulated zero-dose and under-immunized)
(Restore) Restore vaccination coverage in 2023 back to at least 2019 coverage levels, (particularly for the zero-dose ambition)
(Strengthen) Strengthen immunization systems, within primary health care, to increase coverage in 2023 back onto the trajectory of the IA2030 goals.