AUC, Africa CDC, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, UNICEF and WHO join the rest of the continent to celebrate African Vaccination Week

Addis Ababa / Geneva, April 26, 2024 – From April 24 to 30, 2024, the commemoration of African Vaccination Week (AVW) will begin on the African continent, which takes place annually in the last week of April.

This year’s commemoration also coincides with the celebration of 50 years of the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) initiative, which marks collective efforts to save and improve countless lives against vaccine-preventable diseases. It calls on countries to increase investment in immunization programs to protect future generations. Significant progress has been made across the continent with increased vaccination rates and reduced infant mortality, ensuring every vaccinated child can survive and thrive.

This year’s Africa Vaccination Week provides an opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of vaccines and promote vaccination across the lifespan, reducing mortality from vaccine-preventable diseases. The theme for this year, “Humanly possible: saving lives through immunization”, emphasizes the need to intensify efforts to save lives through immunization. This can be done through routine immunization programs and catch-up vaccination campaigns on the continent.

To accelerate progress and realign the continent towards the goals of Agenda 2063 and the SDG 2030 targets, there is an urgent need for greater political commitment and multi-stakeholder collaboration to reach underserved communities. In 2016, health ministers and other high-level representatives met at the Ministerial Conference on Vaccination in Africa and drafted the Addis Declaration on Vaccination (ADI). Following this milestone, civil society organizations, religious leaders from faith-based organizations and parliamentarians pledged their support to African Union Member States in the implementation of the ADI.

Subsequently, in 2017, the Heads of State or Government of the African Union Member States officially endorsed the ten commitments set out in the Addis Ababa Declaration on Immunization (Assembly/AU/Dec.624 (XXVIII)). This approval marked a crucial step towards accelerating the implementation of the ADI obligations.

The endorsed commitments prioritize access to safe and effective vaccines, and urge Member States’ Health Ministers to launch strong advocacy campaigns to achieve these goals. Furthermore, they underscored the importance of aligning these efforts with those outlined in the Global Vaccine Action Plan, with the aim of improving overall healthcare systems.

Increased investment in primary health care will bring services closer to communities, making it easier to reach the marginalized. Investing in human resources for health care, surveillance and improvements in health information systems is also critical. Multi-stakeholder collaboration to tackle misinformation and build and sustain community demand, while addressing gender barriers, will increase coverage, prevent disease and save lives.

The African Union Commission, African CDC, Gavi, UNICEF and WHO applaud the efforts of African Member States to promote access to vaccination at different levels of care and continue to encourage the scale-up of routine immunization services on the continent. At first glance, the African region has made tremendous progress in increasing access to immunization and reducing child mortality in less than a generation. Elimination of polio and tetanus in mothers and newborns respectively; while the introduction of new vaccines will help protect against age-old diseases such as malaria.

The African Union and the above-mentioned partners and other stakeholders will continue to support Member States in raising awareness of the importance of vaccines and immunization and ensure that vaccination programs are adequately financed and financed in all countries, and promote innovative initiatives that improve access to improve vaccines. and save lives.

This year, Africa Vaccination Week aims to raise awareness of the importance of immunization in saving lives and achieving health goals, highlighting the commitment of African Member States to prioritize immunization and ensure adequate resources for vaccination programmes, and highlighting the successes and challenges in immunization over the past 50 years and the way forward; promote collaboration and partnerships to advance immunization efforts across Africa.