The 2024 Annual Meeting of the Essential Programmes on Immunization Managers in Central Africa: A Peer Learning...

Since 1974, Essential Programme on Immunisation managers from ten Central African countries meet yearly with partners to review progress made and share experiences and lessons learned from the implementation of immunization programmes. The 2024 meeting occurred in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, in September 2024. This conference report summarizes the key takeaways from discussions on using immunization data for decision-making, the implementation of the Big Catch-Up (BCU) initiative to reduce the burden of zero-dose children, and progress and challenges in introducing selected new vaccines. Conference Takeaways: Inaccurate administrative data on routine immunization observed in most countries, compared to WHO/UNICEF Estimates of National Immunization Coverage and national survey estimates, affect timely decisions to improve the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) performance. Five countries in Central Africa are among the priority countries of the BCU initiative but, as of the end of August 2024, are yet to formally start its implementation. Cameroon and Central African Republic introduced the malaria vaccine in January 2024 and August 2024, respectively, while the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, and Burundi have planned to do so by 2025.

Meeting participants put forward several recommendations for countries and immunization partners, including but not limited to (i) investing more in routine immunization data quality assurance to better use data to inform decisions, (ii) accelerating the implementation of the BCU initiative to close the immunity gap resulting from routine immunization disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, (iii) updating malaria vaccine introduction plans to invest more in demand generation and community engagement, and (iv) learning from Cameroon's experience in tackling hesitancy to human papilloma virus vaccine. It is critical to set up an appropriate mechanism for monitoring the implementation of these recommendations.