We deliver mass vaccination and routine immunization campaigns and support those run by partners.

Crucially, this doesn’t just involve vaccine supply and hardware—such as vials, syringes and storage. It’s about the demand side too.

Our volunteers help raise awareness of vaccine campaigns, manage vaccination centres and accompany people to their scheduled appointments. They also conduct micro-planning to identify priority groups and ensure no one is left behind.

Our volunteers work with communities to understand and counter their fears and anxieties surrounding vaccines. This includes sharing accurate and accessible health information and working with trusted community figures, such as elders and religious leaders. Learn more about our community engagement work.

Our volunteers are trained to detect, report and monitor health events in their communities. This enables our network to respond quickly when disease outbreaks occur, saving countless lives.

Public authorities often have limited resources for basic health services. As a result, health care and vaccination services are often prioritised for those living in urban, easy-to-reach areas. Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers fill gaps by running mobile clinics in remote and rural areas—getting vital immunization services to where they are needed most.

Because of their permanent presence in communities, trained Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers are often the first to respond to health outbreaks. They can deliver a wide range of activities, including:

• Providing essential community health services and support to health facilities (such as ambulance transport)
• Assisting people during isolation, such as providing food and essential items
• Testing, screening and contact tracing
• Community water, sanitation and hygiene projects
• Mental health and psychosocial support
• Risk communication and community engagement
• Safe and dignified burials

The COVID-19 pandemic has made even clearer the essential role of local humanitarian actors in outbreak response.

In a crisis, our National Societies use innovation and technology to track and respond to gaps in vaccination access. For instance, by developing nation-wide electronic data collection and analysis systems, in partnerships with ministries of health, to monitor vaccine doses and uptake.

The challenge

In the Central African Republic, 23% of the population must walk for more than an hour to reach a health centre. And an estimated 70% of the country is under the control of armed groups—with frequent incidents affecting humanitarian workers. As a result, children across the country risk missing out on life-saving vaccines.

Our work

Since 2018, the IFRC and Central African Red Cross Society (CRCA) have been supporting the national routine immunization programme in a conflict-affected area the size of Germany to make sure no child is left behind.

Red Cross volunteers are present in each of the 3,200 villages in some of the hardest-to-reach areas. They are supporting microplanning (gathering accurate information at the local level on which people are unvaccinated and where they live) and registering children with local health centres to receive their vaccines. They also engage with communities to provide trusted information about health services and monitor for any signs of health outbreaks.

The CRCA is currently supporting more than a quarter of functional health centres in the country. And it’s expanding services to reach a further 2,000 villages.

Our impact

In 2020, Red Cross-supported teams vaccinated over 27,000 infants with their third and final dose of the Pentavalent vaccine, which protects them from five major diseases (diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenzae type b).

In the last few months of the year, they reached almost 73% of the estimated total infant population in those districts, compared with only 50% in 2018 prior to IFRC and CRCA support.

Data collection

The IFRC is also scaling up our innovative data collection work to track and respond to gaps in vaccination access for underserved children.

In partnership with the Ministry of Health and Population, CRCA, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, we have developed an electronic data collection and analysis system used nationwide.

The system enables health workers to know how many vaccine doses have been administered and which working health facilities are offering immunization services. This information is vital in a country where health centres are often taken out of action by conflict or a lack of supplies.

The number of health centres vaccinating each month of 2020 increased by 96% compared to 2018, showing the considerable impact of Red Cross teams in strengthening health systems and reaching vulnerable communities.

Pakistan Red Crescent volunteers are providing vital immunization services to underserved communities in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces on the border with Afghanistan.

Certain villages in the region had not been reached for 15 years. So Red Crescent volunteers have been working hard to conduct outreach activities and mobilize communities. In 2020, they delivered nearly 23,000 mobile and outreach sessions—with data showing a direct correlation between the number of outreach sessions delivered and the number of children vaccinated.

In the Killa Abdullah district of Balochistan, only 9% of targeted children had received their third dose of the Pentavelent vaccine in January 2019. As Red Crescent teams began supporting the Ministry of Health’s immunization efforts, vaccination coverage increased by over 120% in the last quarter of 2020 compared with the previous year.

Vaccination coverage has also increased more than 100% for measles and polio vaccinations, with Red Crescent-supported teams immunizing over 22,000 children in 2020.

Much of the teams’ success relied on their mobility and motivation to go the last mile to reach even the remotest of areas.

Afghanistan is one of two remaining polio-endemic countries in the world. A protracted crisis has continued for close to 35 years, with children making up over 50% of people facing humanitarian needs in the country.

In this challenging environment, the IFRC and the Afghanistan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) are providing an integrated package of primary care services via mobile health teams in conflict-areas, where access to health services is severely limited.

Red Crescent teams are working in the provinces of Paktika and Kandahar on the border with Pakistan, covering three districts and 184 villages. ARCS is the only humanitarian organisation able to access certain areas.

Despite challenges such as insecurity and bans on house-to-house vaccinations, our teams have strived to reach children in need of vaccinations, in particular “missed children” in remote areas. In 2020, ARCS teams administered the oral polio vaccine to over 7,700 “missed children” under 2 years of age and to over 8,000 “missed children” under 5 years of age living in inaccessible areas.

They also provided routine immunization services to almost 5,000 children under 1 year of age with the oral polio vaccine. And they vaccinated thousands more with additional routine antigens.