Faced for several years with repeated health, political, humanitarian and security crises, Haiti faces a particularly difficult situation in terms of vaccination.

Problems of urban violence and population displacement have created an environment conducive to increasing vaccination dropout rates. Added to this, difficulties in accessing health care and vaccine hesitancy linked to misinformation have only increased the epidemic risk posed by diseases such as polio, rubella, rubella syndrome congenital, measles, diphtheria, neonatal tetanus and cholera underlines the Pan American Health Organization and the World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO).

It is in this context that the Ministry of Public Health with the technical support of the PAHO/WHO and the support financial institution of the Government of Canada through the CanGIVE initiative, is organizing an awareness campaign aimed at counting and ensuring regular monitoring of the vaccination status of children aged 0-23 months and pregnant women lost to follow-up and zero doses.

This campaign is implemented through home visits and individual and collective education sessions carried out by 72 health mobilizers targeting areas of great urban poverty in the municipalities of Carrefour, Cite-Soleil, Pétion-ville and Port-au- Prince (West department). These incompletely vaccinated children and pregnant women are then directed to vaccination sites specially set up by the West Health Directorate (DSO) for catch-up activities.

Their joint efforts have made it possible to date to visit 21,822 households and raise awareness among 75,102 people, including 33,699 women. Thanks to these efforts, 5,461 children aged 0-23 months and 1,280 pregnant women were incompletely vaccinated.

These actions, which are part of the strengthening of the national vaccination system, will continue until the end of the year in order to reverse the decline in routine vaccination, particularly in municipalities with compromised security. As part of this effort, CanGIVE is injecting more than 6 million Canadian dollars over a two-year period into the Haitian health system to support awareness and vaccination operations across the country.

HL/ HaitiLibre