Crying out loud: reaching local households with a vaccination message

In World Immunisation Week, George Akor, Advocacy & Policy Adviser for Save the Children in Nigeria, describes how we’re supporting one local community in northern Nigeria to get children life-saving immunisation.

For Mustapha Kwando, the days leading up to the delivery of routine immunisation services are busy ones. Setting out through the dusty streets of Ruwan Bore village in Nigeria’s Zamfara state, he carries with him only the most basic of tool to fight childhood diseases – a megaphone.

And yet, it’s a battle Mustapha believes he is winning. With the megaphone he delivers a basic message to households with newborns.

“I call on mothers to bring their babies for vaccination on immunisation days,” Mustapha says. “I go around the village to inform them that the immunisation day is at hand.”

There are important lessons to be learned here. Zamfara state has low coverage rates of routine immunisation. As a result, child survival indices are also low. A key issue here is the low demand for immunisation from families and communities: many people are simply not aware of its value.

To increase immunisation coverage, Save the Children, with the support of the Gates Foundation, is strengthening accountability between local communities and the primary health care delivery system within them. What that means in reality is we’re training and supporting local ward development committees to be involved in primary health care. As a result, the Ruwan Bore Ward Development Committee has talked to the local town crier, Mustapha, about the risks of children not getting basic vaccinations. Now Mustapha has taken the message on – without charge.

“I am doing this voluntarily,” he says. “I want to see every child in the village healthy.”

Mustapha is linking his efforts to the Ward Development Committee’s support for vaccination campaigns. He covers the length and breadth of the village, doing what he can to ensure that each child under age five has received the shots they need. The committee believes that if the community is better informed about the benefits of routine immunisation, people will demand the service – and this will lead to increased coverage. Mustapha’s role in this is to ensure they reach out to the entire community, and to raise the alarm when families or individuals refuse to take their children for the vaccines. His efforts are not in vain.

“People listen to me and they take action,” Mustapha says.