Speech made on 23 May 2022 by Charlotte Mbuh on behalf of the Members of the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) at the 75th World Health Assembly side event “Immunization Agenda 2030: Enhancing the Essential Immunization Programme at the heart of pandemic preparedness and response”
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I am one of the 6,000 who joined the Movement for IA2030 in March 2022. This was after working for over 10 years for the Ministry of Health in the South Region of my country.
We responded to Dr Tedros’s Call at last year’s World Health Assembly for “a groundswell of support for immunization.”
Everyone who joins the Movement comes with a goal to solve a key challenge, like reaching remote rural areas, working with the urban poor, or serving mobile populations.
But what struck me is how often a new Member says: “I thought that only my country is facing this challenge”.
Any one of these challenges is difficult. Most of us are facing several at once.
These challenges cannot be overcome by any one immunization worker, any one country, or any one organization, no matter how smart, powerful, or well-funded.
Vaccines work when we work together, across borders and boundaries.
In the first two weeks, Immunization practitioners from around the world shared 941 ideas and practices through the Ideas Engine, a digital platform developed by the Geneva Learning Foundation.
Most of us are government workers from the so-called lower levels of the health system. Through this digital platform, we are working side-by-side with colleagues from national teams, in-country partners, and civil society organizations.
Yes, our mission remains to carry out our ministry’s plan.
To do so requires us to adapt and tailor our actions hand in hand with the communities we serve.
We are defying distance to support each other, using our own local resources and capacities to achieve the goals of IA2030.
The Movement offers no per diem, no lure of funding, or other extrinsic incentives.
Yet, every week, Members from all over the world meet to share experience.
Last Thursday, Wasnam Faye MAME SOKHNA joined us.
A midwife, she was transferred from a hospital to a poorly-performing, poorly-resourced rural health facility.
Within months, she turned around her facility. She went from vaccinating 4 children to 30 children per session.
Who was there to help her? It was a fellow Member of the Movement… who lives 3,560 kilometers away.
Using only email and WhatsApp, he shared his practical experience of how to organize vaccination sessions, how to order vaccines, and how to write a monthly vaccination report.
In response to low vaccine uptake, she created a team of “Angels,” turning mothers into peer educators.
That idea came from the IA2030 Ideas Engine.
You will undoubtedly hear many personal stories during the World Health Assembly. The significance of this story is not only that an exemplary leader was able to improve performance. It is how she did so, by connecting in a digital human network of peers united by a common purpose.
There is one challenge that is especially close to my heart.
Earlier this year, 143 women from 38 countries formed the Women Who Deliver Vaccines collective.
We believe that if we could integrate women at all levels of decision making, this will strengthen leadership for immunization.
We would never have connected without this Movement.
IA2030 is the common strand that binds us, across so many different boundaries of geography, job roles, system levels – and gender. Connecting those working in rural health facilities, staff from national government workers, and even members of the global IA2030 working groups based here in Geneva.
Gordon Yibey is a health facility worker. His goal in the IA2030 Movement is to find new ways to involve fathers in routine immunization. “The Movement has set a new pace for us,” he said, “making us realize how important our local work is in making a global impact.”
Dr Folake Olayinka, USAID’s Immunization Team Lead, summed it up in this way: “We have said that we want to listen and that co-creation is very important. The Geneva Learning Foundation brings a direct link to [people on the frontlines]. This is exactly the type of innovative approach that we need to overcome the complex challenges we are faced with in global health.”
Support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and others have helped us to make sparks.
I am convinced that, with your support, we can ignite a fire, helping this Movement grow and thrive until the goals of IA2030 are attained.
It is critical to strengthen the global health architecture to watch for the next pandemic, to prepare for it, and to rapidly manufacture new vaccines.
It is an equally vital investment to build a global platform connecting people and communities. This is the potential of the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030.
