An integrated nationwide Maternal and Child Health Week campaign (MCHW) is underway in Sierra Leone aimed at restoring the delivery of essential health services which were interrupted during the Ebola outbreak. The campaign locally known as “Mammy and Pikin Wellbodi Week” is being conducted from 26-30 November with the focus of reaching an estimated 1.3 million children under 5 years with vitamin A supplementation and deworming with Albendazole. It also provides opportunity to reach children 0-23 months that missed other routine vaccination services. Measles vaccine second dose was also launched during the MCHW.  Pregnant women defaulting in antenatal services will also be reached with focused antenatal care services during the campaign.

This is the first major nationwide health intervention since the end of the Ebola outbreak in early November. The services will be delivered by teams of vaccinators that will go house to house in every community across the country with the aim of complementing facility based health service delivery.

“With the Ebola outbreak declared over, it is now time to scale up effort to end preventable child and maternal deaths and morbidity. We need to harness the energy, all the systems in place and the people who were engaged in the fight against Ebola to now focus on drastically reducing the numbers of children and women dying of preventable causes,” said Dr Anders Nordström, WHO Representative in Sierra Leone.

Introduction of Measles vaccine second dose into the routine immunization schedule.

As part of the MCH Week, the country introduced measles vaccine second dose that will now be available for all children aged 15 months in the routine immunisation schedule. According to the WHO/UNICEF estimates, Sierra Leone's routine Immunization coverage for measles for the years 2011-2014 ranged between 75-88%. This coverage falls below the 95% target required to ensure immunity among the population. Meanwhile, the 2015 post measles Supplementary Immunization coverage survey conducted in August 2015 by the Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS) with support from WHO, also revealed a national coverage of 88.1% which also falls below the required target for herd immunity. The survey showed that only two out of the country’s 14 districts attained the target while the rest did not.  Due to the low coverage the country experienced periodic measles outbreaks in a number of the districts.

WHO recommends introduction of second dose measles vaccine in settings where the coverage with the first dose is higher than 80% and since Sierra Leone has attained >80% coverage of measles first dose, the country introduced the second dose to improve immunity of the targeted children and reduce risks of potential outbreaks. 

The MCH Week is being organized by the Ministry of Health and Sanitation in collaboration with UNICEF, WHO, Helen Keller International, the SABIN Institute of Immunization and other NGOs, with funding from GAVI, Canada (CIDA), European Union and Norway.