Viet Nam’s big catch-up – protecting children through routine immunization in the Central Highlands
It was early morning, but the yard in the Tan Hoa Commune Health Centre, Buon Don District in Dak Lak Province, was already packed. Dozens of people queued, holding children who were about to be vaccinated. Families were diverse, reflecting the large number of ethnic minority groups in the area, particularly Jrai and Ede.
As in many countries, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted routine immunization in Viet Nam, leaving some children in this commune unprotected against vaccine-preventable diseases.
For the past two years, health-care workers at Tan Hoa Commune Health Centre, which was already stretched thin with limited resources and funding, had to focus on pandemic measures and the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.
Although at the end of 2022, routine immunization resumed, there were challenges to ensuring all children in the area received critical early childhood vaccines. These included vaccine hesitancy among some ethnic minority people due to religious and cultural beliefs, and remoteness – with some community members living far from health centres, often in places without road access. In addition, like many families around the world, some parents were suffering from vaccine fatigue after the COVID-19 vaccination rollout for both adults and children. For these reasons, the Central Highlands of Viet Nam, which includes Dak Lak, has one of the lowest rates of fully immunized children in Viet Nam, with only 27 out of 52 districts meeting national immunization targets.
Despite these challenges, the doctors and nurses at Tan Hoa Commune Health Centre are committed to ensuring as many children as possible are fully vaccinated. They continue to work through the list of children registered in the local immunization registry, contacting families and encouraging them to bring their children to get doses they missed during the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vaccines protect against more than 20 diseases including measles, rubella, polio, hepatitis B and diphtheria that pose serious risks to children, making routine childhood immunization critical to a child’s healthy development.
By midday, with the sun blazing, the queue was shorter, the day’s session was almost over. But the immunization work in Buon Don District, and more broadly across the Central Highland’s Region and the country, now requires sustained effort and extensive collaboration between the government, communities and partners. Many more of these immunization sessions are needed along with increased efforts to address accessibility issues and tackle vaccine hesitancy. This combined work is critical to ensure that every child in every corner of the country is safer and healthier through receiving all their recommended routine immunizations.
WHO Viet Nam, along with other partners, has been working with the government to resume childhood vaccination efforts. WHO Viet Nam is also committed to help strengthening the primary health-care system, as grassroots health-care facilities are vital not only for childhood immunization efforts, but also for disease management and control, especially when the number of children who missed out childhood vaccinations is large enough to trigger an outbreak.
Scroll through the photos below to learn more about the children and adults attending a catch-up vaccination session at the Tan Hoa Commune Health Centre.