A mother of four and restaurant owner from Dabola, in central Guinea, Diaraye says she felt scared about vaccines. She didn’t think she had enough information and she’d heard rumours about harmful side effects.
Several health workers came to visit her to try and convince her to vaccinate her newborn, Madiou, but she still felt uneasy.
That was until she met Bérété, a Guinea Red Cross supervisor with the Community Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness Programme (CP3). A mother herself, Bérété connected with Diaraye and patiently explained how vaccinating her own children has kept them safe from diseases. She responded sensitively to Diaraye’s concerns.
Newly informed and confident, Diaraye agreed for Bérété to take baby Madiou for his first immunizations. Since then, Diaraye has become a champion for vaccination within her community.
“My advice to mothers is to agree to their children getting vaccinated," says Diaraye. "Since the Red Cross came to help me vaccinate my baby, I’ve seen that it’s good for children. And I tell all mothers to go and get their children vaccinated at the health centre.”
A global story, playing out locally, house-by-house
Diaraya’s story is far from unique. People around the world often don’t have access to life-saving vaccines, do not have all the facts about how they work, or don’t know who they can trust to give them accurate and unbiased information.
This is why trusted community organizations, like Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, are playing a critical role in reaching out at the local level, providing trustworthy information while enabling access to vaccines in places that are underserved by health services. In many cases, they are in the midst of ongoing emergencies.
This year, World Immunization Week revolves around the theme of Humanly Possible, also the name of a global campaign to celebrate and build on the achievements made in protecting people from preventable diseases during the last 75 years.
For its part, the IFRC is redoubling efforts to bring awareness and vaccines to people in vulnerable situations — conflict, outbreaks, forced migration, natural disaster — or who lack access to immunization services for whatever reason.
The approach varies to meet the specific situation of each county. They also span the globe, from National Societies in Guinea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Kyrgyzstan, and many others. Here are a few more examples of the ways Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies are taking on a wide range of very different immunization challenges.
A volunteer from the Philippine Red Cross delivers a vaccination against measles to a young boy in Cotabato, Philippines in April 2024.
Photo: Philippines Red Cross
Philippine Red Cross takes on another measles outbreak
The Philippine Red Cross Society (PRCS) has been supporting the government of The Philippines in responding to a measles outbreak by vaccinating more than 15,000 children ages 6 months to below 10 years old with measles vaccine.
As of April 14, 2024, the Philippine Red Cross has vaccinated more than 15,500 children, mobilizing a total of 131 volunteers (35 vaccinators and 96 support volunteers) in 85 communities in four provinces.
The PRCS’ measles outbreak response is being done in collaboration with the ICRC, which also has a long-time presence in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, an area where people are impacted by internal conflict. Because of low immunization rates in the area, It's also one of the main places in the country where the measles outbreak is happening.
The PRCS has been part of other polio and measles outbreak responses and plans to expand this current operation by deploying vaccination teams from other chapters, with the help of resources from the IFRC and the United States Center for Disease Control.
The Thai Red Cross Society is using technology to improve access to immunization to underserved communities.
Photo: Thai Red Cross Society
Using innovation to improve access to immunization in Thailand
The Thai Red Cross Society (TRCS), meanwhile, has been using technology in innovative ways to bring immunization services to people who would not otherwise have access to immunization services.
In Thailand, many displaced people and undocumented residents are living without proper forms of identification required to access vaccination services. To address the health gap, TRCS partnered with the Department of Disease Control of the Ministry of Public Health and Thailand’s National Electronics and Computer Technology Center to develop the Thai Red Cross Biometric Authentication System.
This system uses a biometric authentication system, using face and iris recognition technology — while still ensuring data privacy — to accurately identify and register vaccine recipients.
This allows people without official documentation to still receive vaccines and it enables a way to keep a record of the vaccinations received.
Using this technology, TRCS reached 20,000 adolescent girls (specifically ethnic minorities, migrants, and refugees) living in temporary shelters across the country with 40,000 doses of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. This helped to significantly decrease their chances of getting HPV, a major, but vaccine-preventable cause of cervical cancer.
If this can be expanded, more displaced persons and undocumented residents can be assured to have access to their next essential vaccine, such as a booster shot.
Local presence, ready to prevent and respond
Over the long term, immunization campaigns are only fully effective if they are of high quality and result in high rates of coverage. The challenge now is to improve and strengthen routine immunisation to better prevents future outbreaks, while also ensuring there is capacity in place to respond quickly and engage communities — if and when outbreaks occur.
This is why the work of National Societies is so critical. As national organizations with widespread local presence, they are ideally suited to work with local and national health authorities and communities to build trust while delivering consistent access to immunization. The video below shows how the Pakistan Red Crescent brings immunization through local clinics.
Back in Guinea, Red Cross volunteer Bérété continues to visit Diaraye to make sure her son Madiou is doing well, as part of her work engaging members of her community on how to protect themselves and their families.
“We keep supporting her, because every time I send her child to hospital to be vaccinated, I never forget to follow up,” explains Bérété. “Every morning I come to see her to check on the child. Because you can’t just vaccinate a child and leave without following up. If she can see that you are there for her at all times, she will have the courage” to keep up with necessary immunizations in the future.