Vaccines for children’s survival

By Macdonald Thom:

It is Thursday, February 29 2024, one of the rare dates on the calendar. At Malomo Health Centre in Ntchisi, Fales Felix has just given birth to a baby boy.

The next year the child will be on the exact date he was born, he will be four.

The 23-year-old mother from Chipendeka Village, Traditional Authority (TA) Chilooko, some 10 kilometres from the health centre, has made sure that as soon as the child is born, he gets BCG and OPV0 vaccines.

“It is important that the child receives the vaccines. They make him healthy and he will not be attacked by diseases,” Felix says.

She is one of the women in her village, who, under Msolokera Mother Care Group (MCG), have been encouraging parents to make sure their children receive all the necessary vaccines.

She says although the work the women are doing is tough, it is pleasing that many slowly understand the significance of making sure that children are receiving vaccines as scheduled.

“When advocacy for vaccines started in this area, many realised the significance of protecting their little ones from different kinds of diseases,” Felix says.

Msolokera MCG is located about 40 kilometres from Ntchisi Boma, in one of the hardest-to-reach areas.

The MCG members have acquired the knowledge that will, in essence, help improve health for all in their location.

Sophilet Rodrick, the MCG chairperson, says before the group started its operations in 2019, child mortality rate was high in the area.

“The children were being attacked by different diseases because their parents were not taking them to health facilities to receive the necessary vaccines.

“Deaths of infants were very common, but that is now history as the parents have started taking children to under-five clinics to have them vaccinated,” Rodrick says.

Senior Group Village Head Chiwinga, in Sub-TA Masanya, TA Chilooko, is impressed with what the MCG is doing. He has pledged to ensure the women’s work is smooth.

“Whenever we get reports that some people are making the work of these women difficult, we invite them and advise them accordingly in the presence of their village heads.

“We tell them the importance of vaccination. In most cases, people change their attitudes,” he says.

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal Number 3 aspires to ensure healthy lives and promote the wellbeing for all at all ages.

The women are doing all they can to ensure children are taking all the vaccines.

They are, for instance, mobilising others on the importance of vaccines and telling them to go with their children to under-five clinics.

The women are also tracing children whose parents have failed to take them to the clinics to get scheduled vaccines, so that they get inoculated.

Apart from that, the MCGs are also involved in advocacy. They engage stakeholders on funding for construction of under-five clinics and houses for Health Surveillance Assistants (HSAs) and other materials, facilities and utilities needed at the clinics.

Ching’amba, another MCG about 20 kilometres away from Chiwinga Village, embodies all these qualities.

The MCG has managed to lobby for a refrigerator from Ntchisi District Hospital to help them keep vaccines, and requested African Parks, a company managing Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve, to connect water to Ching’amba Trading Centre.

The group has also pushed for connection of electricity to Ching’amba under-five clinic.

Its chairperson Anna Selemani says the refrigerator has helped to solve the challenges they used to experience when getting vaccines from Malomo Health Centre.

“It was difficult for our HSAs to go to Malomo Health Centre to get the vaccines. This resulted in many children not getting the vaccines in time, especially when there was no transportation,” Selemani says.

Ching’amba and Msolokera are two of the 30 MCGs in Ntchisi.

Malawi Health Equity Network (Mhen) established all of them to facilitate the implementation of a five-year Health Systems and Immunisation Strengthening project.

The project is being implemented with financial support from Gavi the Vaccine Alliance.

Apart from Ntchisi, other districts are Blantyre, Lilongwe, Dowa, Kasungu, Mchinji, Mzimba and Chitipa.

Mavuto Guma, Ntchisi District Hospital Cold-Chain Technician, states that the work of the women has helped improve vaccination coverage in the district to over 85 percent.

“They have been on the forefront in the provision of vaccines in hard-to-reach areas. We are happy with the contribution they have made towards vaccination coverage in Ntchisi district,” Guma says.

To ensure that they do their work well, the women are provided with the necessary knowledge about vaccines children are supposed to receive.

Grace Masoakhumbira, 32, from Kachiza Village and a member of Ching’amba MCG, is able to mention all the vaccines children are supposed to receive.

“After being trained, we started working hard to make sure that children receive vaccines. We are working with all stakeholders to ensure that we promote children’s health,” Masoakhumbira says.

Mhen Assistant Project Officer Hannah Dzongo expressed joy at the way the women are helping in immunisation initiatives.

“They have helped in scaling up immunisation coverage in many districts. These are areas which had very low vaccination rates,” Dzongo says.