Protecting Angolan children from vaccine-preventable diseases

After graduating from medical school in 2012, Fadário had a dream: to help get as many Angolan children vaccinated as possible, to reduce vaccine-preventable deaths.

Thanks to the joint efforts of government authorities at all levels, national and international partners, civil society and the population in general, Fadário has witnessed significant achievements in immunization in recent years, with the certification of Angola as a wild polio-free country in 2015 and the introduction of new vaccines such as pneumococcus, rotavirus and the combined measles and rubella vaccine. Disruptions associated with COVID-19 vaccination efforts overwhelmed health systems in 2020 and 2021, resulting in dramatic setbacks and many children being left out of vaccination coverage.

Despite the progress that has been made, Angola still faces several challenges in terms of increasing immunization indicators and reducing vaccine-preventable deaths. The country needs to ensure the effective management of vaccines and vaccination material, to avoid stock-outs and guarantee the availability of vaccines at all vaccination posts. In addition, it is crucial to increase vaccination coverage of all antigens in all the country’s municipalities and implement supplementary vaccination activities for targeted diseases such as polio, measles and maternal tetanus.

Fadário is aware of these challenges, given his extensive career in the health sector. At the age of 20, he joined the Public Health Department of the Ministry of Health as an immunization technician and, in 2001 he became a WHO immunization officer. As a WHO officer, he has worked in various locations in the country and in the Republic of Mozambique.

With pride, he recalls the work carried out in Mozambique, where, based on the experience of Angola, he supported the introduction of a model that promoted the participation of other community players in the use of the polio vaccine, which had previously been exclusive to health technicians. This approach has helped to improve community engagement, reduce rejection and significantly increase vaccination coverage in Mozambique. He cites this experience as a perfect example of peer-to-peer country learning which WHO promotes.

Currently stationed in Benguela province, in southern Angola, Fadário is responsible for active case search of children with Acute Flaccid Paralysis in hospitals and communities, training health workers and other agents who participate in the process of detecting public health events, as well as ensuring the training of vaccinators and post-vaccination monitoring teams.

“No child should be left unvaccinated. The vaccine is one of the greatest achievements of medicine, through which we have the possibility to preventing and protecting our children against diseases, particularly polio which causes childhood paralysis.”

With the aim of vaccinating all children and ensuring a polio-free world, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative has defined three crucial strategies that are also being implemented in Angola, which include routine immunization with the polio vaccine, supplementary polio immunization activities and surveillance of acute flaccid paralysis.

Angola is successfully implementing these strategies and is on the right track towards maintaining a polio-free status, Dr Fekadu Lemma, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative Coordinator in Angola, remains unwavering in his confidence: Despite the challenges such as high cross-border population movement and the presence of several informal crossing points that pose risks of importing the polio virus, Angola can expedite immunization and protect all children against polio by integrating polio vaccination with other health interventions and services and ensuring proactive ownership of the vaccination program by local governments. Despite the persistent challenges to the implementation of vaccination initiatives for all children, Fadário has no doubt: It is possible, and we will all, together, ensure a world without polio and without deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of World Health Organization (WHO) – Angola.