African Vaccination Week in Ethiopia marked a pivotal moment to advance the Big Catch-Up (BCU) initiative by raising awareness, engaging communities, and enhancing vaccination efforts. A high-level advocacy visit was conducted to an outreach vaccination session in an urban slum area, hosted by Addis Ababa City Administration Health Bureau in collaboration with Woreda 03 Health Center of Kolfe Keranyo sub city.

Ashenafi, a community representative from "Gamo," an urban slum area of Kolfe Keranyo sub-city, highlighted the challenges faced by the community traditional believe, poor health seeking behavior and lack of basic services in their leaving area. Approximately 11,035 people have resided in this slum area for the past couple of years without access to a health facility. The community harbored misconceptions, fearing that outsiders would bring harm to their children. This led to isolation and reluctance to seek medical help, even for sick children, and home births became common practice. Consequently, children missed vaccinations at birth and did not follow routine immunization schedules. As a result, a recent measles outbreak occurred in this area before a couple of months has resulted three deaths of children.

In response, Woreda 3 Health Center initiated discussions with the community representatives. After numerous advocacy meetings and dialogues, health workers convinced the community of the importance of vaccination. Community representatives agreed to raise awareness alongside health workers, leading to conduct a regular outreach vaccination session once in a week, and the community has begun to bring their children for vaccinations.

"We are very happy to see this community demanding immunization services and bringing their children for vaccination," said Mr. Fikre Ayele, Medical Director and Public Health Specialist of Woreda 03 Health Center. "They are now aware of the routine vaccination schedule and bring their children with the family health card following appointments given by health workers." In the last six months, a total of 227 under-five children have been vaccinated, with 165 receiving measles, 28 Penta I, and 95 polio vaccines. No measles cases have been reported from this community in the past one months.

As part of the AVW commemoration, an advocacy visit to the outreach site conducted along with the State Minister of Health, and immunization partners. Dr. Dereje Duguma urged the health center to continue identifying unreached communities and reducing zero-dose children. He also appreciated community volunteers for mobilizing the community to ensure their children are vaccinated and protected from vaccine-preventable diseases.

The national commemoration of the 2025 African Vaccination Week, which was aimed to advocate for routine immunization, enhance outreach to reach zero-dose and under-vaccinated children, engage communities and leaders, leverage media, and intensify advocacy, social mobilization, and immunization activities was financially supported by WHO. The AVW event took place on April 30th at Woreda 03 Health Center. The event was attended by the State Minister of Health, Addis Ababa City Administration Health Bureau, representatives from WHO, UNICEF, Gates Foundation, Save the Children, and other immunization partners. 

BCU activities were promoted, and awareness was raised during the national AVW launching event through keynote speeches by honorable Dr. Dereje Duguma, the State Minister of Health Ethiopia, Mrs. Angatu Mohamed, Deputy Bureau Head and Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Program Lead from Addis Ababa City Administration Health Bueau, and Dr. Kaluwa Owen, WHO representative to Ethiopia who presented a joint statement on behalf of immunization partners. 

A panel discussion was held as part of the agenda, focusing on reaching zero-dose and under-vaccinated children. The discussion followed a presentation by Mr. Melkamu Ayalew, Head of the Immunization Service Desk and Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) Manager at the Ministry of Health Ethiopia (Maternal, Child & Adolescent Health Lead Executive Office). During the session, strategic directions were shared to strengthen routine immunization efforts and ensure that zero-dose and under-vaccinated children are effectively reached through targeted interventions.