Millions of lives saved in Africa thanks to vaccine advances

The commitment of national governments and the support of partners such as the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi), UNICEF, and the WHO have led to significant progress in increasing immunization coverage in Africa. This initiative has played a crucial role in protecting millions of individuals from serious diseases such as measles, polio, and cervical cancer. Significant progress has been seen in Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, and Uganda, where diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP3) vaccination coverage among one-year-olds increased from 72% to 74% in 2023. With vaccination coverage of human papillomavirus (HPV) due to reach 40% in Africa in 2023, up from 28% the previous year, the region has the second-highest coverage rate globally. There has been a 93% drop in cases of type 1 poliovirus from 2023 to 2024. Since 2023, the ‘Big Catch-Up’ initiative has been successfully vaccinating children in 20 African countries who have not received a single dose of a routine essential vaccine. The programme has now vaccinated over 5 million children. Gavi has launched a five-year strategy, ‘Gavi 6.0’, based on global protection against pandemics and epidemics; individual protection, including reaching 50 million children with a malaria vaccine by 2030; and community protection, reducing the number of unvaccinated children. Limited access to healthcare in remote areas, logistical and cold chain constraints, vaccine misinformation, and insufficient funding for immunization programs remain barriers to eradicating highly infectious diseases.