Ahead of World Immunization week, Save the Children International (SCI) in partnership with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has kick-started a $1 million initiative to empower local organisations...

Ahead of World Immunization week, Save the Children International (SCI) in partnership with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has kick-started a $1 million initiative to empower local organisations in Nigeria and Ethiopia to fast-track cutting-edge solutions and tackle barriers preventing children from receiving vaccinations.

The move is against the backdrop that one-third of the 8.7 million children has never received vaccination globally, live in Nigeria and Egypt as impacts of the pandemic, poverty, climate change, instability and conflict continue to disrupt vaccination campaigns.

The group in a statement signed by its Acting Media Communications Manager, Mrs Rhoda Ndahi, recalled that the organisation and GSK 2023 renewed their decade-long partnership for a further five years, with an investment of £15 million from GSK enabling two new vaccination programmes in Ethiopia and Nigeria focused on reducing the number of zero dose children.

To this end, she said Save the Children and GSK Immunisation Accelerator is open for applications from community-based organisations, Non-Governmental Organisationss, local research teams, social enterprises and tech companies, assuming that the most promising approaches will get the opportunity to increase their impact through financial and technical support and pilot their innovations in a live setting.

“Building on this work, innovators applying to the Accelerator can address any type of barrier to the access and utilisation of vaccines on both the supply and demand side, such as improving community engagement, streamlining logistics to increase the availability and accessibility of vaccines and strengthening data management to track vaccine coverage rates.

“Grants on offer are up to the value of $100,000 per project, alongside wrap-around support services from technical guidance to legal advice and branding assistance, tailored to address the diverse needs of varying size companies and startups,” it said.

Country Director, Save the Children International Nigeria, Duncan Harvey, said the group plans to implement immunization-related projects and interventions across Nigeria in response to the high rate of zero-dose and unimmunized children in the country.

He added that the Save the Children and GSK Immunisation Accelerator was born out of an understanding of the urgent necessity for locally-led innovation to achieve a shared vision of a world where no child suffers from a vaccine-preventable disease saying this collaboration opens new opportunities and efforts in tackling the barriers and defiance to immunization, especially in our communities.

As locally led innovators, the uniqueness and relatability of the innovations will address widely the issues of zero-dose immunized children and provide more sustainable solutions that translate to a higher number of children being immunized.”

GSK Chief Global Health Officer, Dr Thomas Breuer, said: “We’re excited to see applications open for the Immunisation Accelerator. Our partnership with Save the Children is guided by local communities, experts and stakeholders, so seeking out the local knowledge and capabilities in Ethiopia and Nigeria is fundamental in finding unique innovations that could help address the critical need for improvements to vaccination rates amongst children.”

“We eagerly anticipate the fresh ideas that the Accelerator will bring, and we’re ready at GSK to support these innovations come to fruition, to help change the trajectory for children in Nigeria, Ethiopia and beyond.

“To be considered, projects must be at the testing stage of the innovation cycle and show evidence of how they could address a priority immunisation barrier. Each will be reviewed against robust selection criteria and consistently evaluated.”