April 24 – 30, 2023
Immunization is a component of Primary Health Care that is simple, safe, and effective in protecting people of all ages against harmful diseases. It saves millions of lives and is one of the world’s most successful and cost-effective health interventions. Immunization prevents debilitating illness, disability, and death from vaccine-preventable diseases, using the body’s natural defenses to strengthen the immune system and build resistance to specific infections.
Compassion International Kenya, with our Frontline Church Partners (FCPs), emphasizes that all our program participants are appropriately age immunized. According to our participants’ recent Health Screening exercise, the immunization coverage for babies aged 0-1 was 96%, and that of children above two years was 85%. It is above the country’s average immunization coverage of 80%, as recorded in the Kenya Demographic Health Survey (KDHS) 2022.
The GOBI-FFF (Growth monitoring, oral rehydration, breastfeeding and immunization, female education, family spacing, and food supplementation) strategy implemented by our FCPs resulted in immunization uptake, protecting children against measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, tuberculosis, and polio. Annually, these diseases kill an estimated 5 million young children, leave 5 million more disabled globally, and cause child malnutrition. In the last year, vaccine-related incidents dropped from 25.7% to 1.1% amongst our participants, a great show of the importance of actively engaging towards supporting communities to stay on track.
Our immunization systems include targeted awareness campaigns to increase the utilization of antenatal and postnatal services where childhood immunizations are free. These packages also entail comprehensive caregiver immunization education and demystifying the myths and cultural norms ensuring many mothers are having their children immunized.
