Project profile — Scaling Up Nutrition and Immunizations - UNICEF

• Senegal (4.07%)
• Burundi (5.43%)
• Uganda (10.06%)
• Mauritania (7.18%)
• South Sudan (1.39%)
• Madagascar (11.11%)
• Sierra Leone (6.88%)
• Chad (6.06%)
• Zambia (3.80%)
• Tanzania (9.13%)
• Benin (7.45%)
• Congo, Democratic Republic (18.74%)
• Central African Republic (8.70%)

• Basic health care:
Basic health care (12220) (33.00%)
Basic nutrition (12240) (67.00%)

• Gender equality (not targeted)
• Environmental sustainability (cross-cutting) (not targeted)
• Participatory development and good governance (not targeted)
• Trade development (not targeted)
• Biodiversity (not targeted)
• Climate change mitigation (not targeted)
• Climate Change Adaptation (not targeted)
• Urban issues (not targeted)
• Desertification (not targeted)
• Children's issues (principal objective)
• Youth Issues (not targeted)
• Disability (not targeted)
• Indigenous Issues (not targeted)
• ICT as a tool for development (not targeted)

This project aims to improve the well-being and survival of children under the age of five in 13 African countries. The project aims to deliver cost-effective life-saving nutrition and health services to children through semi-annual outreach events, also known as Child Health Days. These outreach events are designed to deliver health and nutrition services to children who would not normally be reached by the regular health care system. The three most common services provided in an outreach event are vitamin A supplementation to prevent blindness and early death, immunizations to prevent common childhood illnesses, and de-worming medication to improve the nutrition and general health of children. The project also aims to work with country governments to help them integrate such outreach approaches into their national health strategies and ensure their sustainability over the long term. This project is implemented in Benin, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Mauritania, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.

The expected intermediate outcomes for this project include: (i) achieving and maintaining high coverage of nutrition and immunization interventions delivered through Child Health Days and routine services; and (ii) increasing ownership of child survival activities in countries with strong national health systems.

Results achieved by the end of the project (December 2016) include: (1) communication plans were implemented in 13 countries to support the introduction of new vaccines, and in 46 countries for the introduction of inactivated polio vaccines (IPV) and the oral polio vaccine (OPV); (2) supported the transition from oral to inactive polio vaccines in the routine immunization systems of 74 out of 126 countries; (3) developed, piloted and implemented tools for end-to-end vaccine stock and temperature monitoring guidance (10 countries), and implemented effective vaccine management assessments, and developed improvement plans (19 countries); (4) supported Ebola response with the development of an overall strategy, the analysis of the development of the epidemic, and technical assistance, including the development of a plan for the revitalization of health systems; (5) completed a systematic review of the impact of interventions in nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), education, agriculture, and the built environment (the human-made space in which people live, work and recreate on a day-to-day basis) on child health; and (6) in 11 out of 13 countries, coverage of Vitamin A supplements and deworming (VASD) among children aged 6-50 months was greater than 80% at the end of project. Baseline supplementation coverage ranged from 54-100%.

• Proactive disclosure
• Related activities: Scaling Up Nutrition - Helen Keller International