In Sierra Leone, the Ebola outbreak has affected all aspects of health care. Exact numbers are yet to be confirmed but it is clear that many children have missed out on routine vaccination services during the outbreak. To counter this, mass immunization campaigns are being held nationwide

An estimated 1.4 million children younger than five years old were targeted with tri-valent oral polio vaccine (tOPV) during a countrywide 4-days supplementary immunization campaign from 2 – 5 October. Over 7,000 teams of vaccinators went house to house to administer the vaccine to all eligible children and marking every house reached and the fingers of children that were vaccinated. It is the fourth mass campaign this year, all part of Sierra Leone’s plans to restore immunization services to their pre-Ebola coverage levels.   

“As Ebola virus disease is now contained, there is need to build community confidence in utilising health services including immunisation. WHO will work with MOHS and partners to ensure eligible children are reached with vaccines, ensuring infection prevention and control measures are put in place at immunisation service delivery points“, said Dr Pamela Mitula, Immunisation focal point at the WHO Country Office in Sierra Leone.

During the Ebola outbreak, there was a marked decline in the utilization of services at healthcare facilities as well as decrease in routine vaccination coverage due to fear of Ebola by parents and caregivers. Based on this, the Government and partners have incorporated, tracing of all children aged 0-23 months who missed routine immunisation vaccines by assessing their vaccination cards and administered the missed vaccines.

 “It is good that Ebola is finally going away along with the fear of the disease that kept us away from health facilities and health workers. Seeing health workers back in our communities with vaccination services for our children is encouraging us also to start going to health facilitiesand not let our children die of preventable diseases just because of the fear of Ebola” said Fatmata Bangura, in Tombo village.

During the outbreak Fatmata’s daughter missed five different routine vaccines all of which were administered to the child when a team of vaccinators came to her house.

MAKING SURE THAT NO CHILD IS LEFT BEHIND

Monitoring that every child in every community is reached no matter where they live in Sierra Leone, WHO recruited, trained and deployed 62 independent monitors to monitor and evaluate the quality and the real number of children vaccinated in every community including in remote rural settings. The monitors conducted random sampling of households to identify any missed or unvaccinated children using marked or unmarked fingers of the eligible children but also house marking as indicators. They also provided information based on their findings on missed or poorly covered areas or communities to districts on daily basis for action during the exercise.. Their  final evaluation  will be analysed to determine the actual coverage and challenges with the aime to improve future campaigns. National level supervisors from the Ministry of Health and Sanitation as well as partners were also deployed to support the campaign planning and implementation in the districts.

The campaign that was led by MOHS with partners support was mainly funded by WHO and UNICEF through the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.