Strengthening routine immunization services and sustainable financing for immunization

Project Priorities

IMMUNIZATIONbasics is dedicated to the essential task of ensuring that every child in the developing world is fully immunized in the first year of life. Working with global, regional, national, and sub-national partners, the project provides practical, field-oriented technical analysis, makes information about best practices in the field of immunization available and aims to strengthen health systems by building local capacity to offer effective, timely, and sustainable vaccination services.

To achieve the goals of increased immunization coverage and reduced mortality from vaccine-preventable diseases, IMMUNIZATIONbasics focuses foremost on two objectives:

Strong routine immunization services

IMMUNIZATIONbasics provides general support to enhance the policies, strategies, systems and skills required to increase and sustain the coverage of routine immunization services. Top priority is given to influencing policies and strategies with implications for routine immunization; to developing the capacity of ministries of health, USAID missions, USAID-supported projects, NGOs and others to introduce and scale up the Reaching Every District (RED) strategy and other effective approaches to strengthening routine immunization; and to ensuring that critical communications functions are part of all immunization programs.

Sustainable immunization financing

Immunization programs face serious financing challenges, as countries simultaneously work to expand coverage, introduce new and under-used vaccines, and meet accelerated disease-control objectives. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) has provided countries with time-limited funding for new vaccines, safe injection equipment and systems strengthening. If governments are to continue providing new vaccines and safe injections when GAVI support ends, they must begin to mobilize new sources of domestic and external funding now.

To achieve these objectives, the project:

• Gives top priority to routine immunization
  Strong regular services must be in place if countries are going to reach and sustain immunization coverage and disease control objectives over time. Therefore, IMMUNIZATIONbasics focuses, first and foremost, on assisting countries to strengthen and improve the sustainability of their routine immunization services. The project also promotes greater attention to routine immunization among the other global immunization partners.
• Shares best practices and concentrates on the introduction and scaling up of proven approaches
  For over 30 years, developing countries have been working to make immunization more widely available, and there is substantial experience and knowledge about what works. IMMUNIZATIONbasics strives to ensure that this knowledge is systematically applied. The project works with partners to understand their problems and objectives and promotes approaches that are practical, linked to country assessments, and developed and applied hand-in-hand with host-country counterparts. IMMUNIZATIONbasics helps countries adapt and scale up approaches, such as the Reaching Every District approach (RED), which have been successful in multiple settings. The project’s work also includes the documentation and dissemination of successful projects and initiatives, through a mix of electronic, face-to-face, and print media.
• Strengthens immunization in the context of the overall health system
  Sustainable routine immunization services are dependent, over the long term, sustainable health services and systems. IMMUNIZATIONbasics addresses immunization needs in the context of the overall public health systems in which immunization programs operate, never losing sight of the fact that the priorities, policies, financing and management of a health system are as important to routine immunization as any immunization-specific inputs that our project or partners might provide.
• Supports those who are already working to improve immunization
  Ministries of health, NGOs, USAID missions and projects, WHO and UNICEF country offices, GAVI sub-regional working groups, and others are actively engaged in efforts to increase immunization coverage in most countries. Likewise, ministries of health and of finance are already costing and beginning to seek new sources of funding for immunization programs. IMMUNIZATIONbasics works hand-in-hand with groups that are already engaged in countries, offering evidence to inform their decisions and transferring skills, tools and proven approaches for their adaptation and use.
• Builds effective partnerships
  The project is committed to working in partnership at global, regional and national levels. IMMUNIZATIONbasics' expertise in routine immunization gives it a unique perspective and a complementary niche vis-a-vis other global and regional immunization partners who focus on accelerated disease control (measles mortality reduction, polio eradication, NNT reduction) and the introduction of new vaccines and safe injection technologies.
• Advocates not only for routine immunization, but also for the larger child health agenda
  At the present time, immunization is well funded by the international partners, particularly when compared to other child health interventions. Experience shows, however, that today's support does not guarantee adequate funding over time. IMMUNIZATIONbasics is committed to working with its colleagues in the larger child health community to achieve increased funding for child health, while also advocating that immunization receives the funding it merits as one of the most cost effective of all child health interventions.
• Promotes a global and regional environment that supports country efforts to strengthen routine immunization
  Governments are heavily influenced by the global and regional initiatives launched by GAVI, WHO, UNICEF, the World Bank, and other multilateral and bilateral organizations. IMMUNIZATIONbasics engages with these organizations at global and regional level, both by advising USAID/HIDN on its interactions with and contributions to them, and by participating directly with them in working groups and commissions that advise on important global and regional policies.

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