Vaccination

Gender Gaps in COVID 19 Vaccines

COVID-19 vaccinations are quickly becoming a story of inequality. Gender inequality is a critical part of this story. In 16 countries where CARE has data, women are less likely to be vaccinated, and less likely to feel vaccines are safe.
There are massive local and global gaps in who can get vaccinated Only 1 9 of people in low income countries are vaccinated, and 79 of vaccinations have been in wealth countries Tragically, wealth and geography are just two factors that skew access to vaccines Another is gender In many low and middle income countries, women are less likely to get COVID-19 vaccines than men are This compounds gender inequality women are already facing in health and decision making Read More...

COVID-19: Impacts, Attitudes, and Safety Nets in Haiti (April 2021)

In April 2021, CARE conducted interviews with savings group members and leaders to understand their experiences of COVID-19, and how it was changing their lives. The survey included 364 women and 175 men, for a total of 539 respondents. This follows a survey done in June 2020 to understand what was happening at that time for members of savings groups. The surveys covered Artibonite and Grand Anse.

COVID-19 continues to have important impacts for women and men in savings groups. In general, men and women in these groups were reporting similar challenges across the sample. 86% of women and men are reporting impacts in their livelihoods, and 98% of people say that COVID-19 is affecting their ability to save. 64% say they can’t meet family needs and hunger has gone up. 90% of people are reporting that COVID-19 is impacting their social lives. More women than men report that Gender Based Violence has gone up. While women are more likely to have lost influence in the household than men (39% compared to 33%), men are more likely to report that they lost social status in the community (48% compared to 43%). Read More...

COVID-19 Vaccination Uptake: A study of Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of Marginalized Communities in Iraq

CARE Iraq conducted a study to better understand community acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination and existing barriers to vaccine uptake. The objectives of the study were to create an understanding of people’s knowledge, attitudes and perceptions about COVID-19 and the vaccines, establish what reasons undermine the COVID-19 vaccination campaign and inform about the status of vaccine uptake among marginalized communities. The results of the study can inform policy makers and health actors to design awareness campaigns and address barriers to vaccine uptake to increase the vaccination rate.

CARE found that:
• Vaccine hesitancy is high.
• Women have less access to, knowledge of, and willingness to accept the COVID-19 vaccine then men.
• Barriers to access are still high, and higher for women than for men.
• Fear of side effects is the biggest obstacle.
• There is little trust in the vaccination process.
• Many people do not believe vaccines are important.
• People are not confident they have enough accurate information.

Key recommendations
• Social media can be a primary channel for vaccine messaging.
• It’s critical to counteract misinformation.
• Multiple sources of information are critical.
• Focus messaging for women and religious leaders.
• Develop different messages in different areas.
• Build on people’s willingness to be convinced with good information. Read More...

Community Scorecard for COVID-19 Vaccines in Malawi

The significant amount of misinformation surrounding COVID-19 has deteriorated trust in governments and health systems, leading the World Health Organization to claim it as an “infodemic.” As the massive vaccine roll-out efforts launch, systematic trust-building and social accountability approaches are vital to ensure that civil society can hold governments accountable for equitable and people-centered vaccine roll-out that reaches the last mile. CARE knows that epidemics, like COVID-19 and Ebola, start and end with communities, which is why we are working to build meaningful citizen engagement into national vaccine roll-out frameworks to increase trust, accountability, and information dissemination.
CARE’s Community Score Card
The Community Score Card (CSC) was developed by CARE Malawi in 2002 and has been effectively used in a wide range of settings and sectors to ensure that public services are accountable to the people and communities they serve. CSC has demonstrated impact on power-shifting and improving service quality and trust building within and between communities and government actors. When COVID-19 arrived in Malawi during March 2020, CARE adapted CSC for remote use. The remote CSC includes an SMS platform and WhatsApp groups through which groups of men, women, youth, community and religious leaders, and service providers could voice their concerns and hesitancies about the vaccine and other health services. The CSC helped to identify major concerns around the vaccine and aided stakeholders in creating locally-driven solutions to combat vaccine hesitancy and misinformation.
Building on these early experiences, from May to June 2021, CARE further implemented a pilot project designed to support efficient and equitable COVID-19 vaccine roll-out in three locations in Malawi: Kandeu and Chigodi health facility catchment populations in Ntcheu district and the New Hope Clinic health facility catchment population in Ngolowindo in Salima district. In all three locations, key stakeholders included groups of women, men, youth, community leaders (chiefs and religious), district health management teams, and health personnel (including health surveillance staff, health facility staff in-charge, and the health center management committee). CARE Malawi’s CSC team led the implementation of the pilot with support from CARE USA and digital support from Kwantu. Read More...

South Sudan: The True Cost of COVID-19 Vaccines

By July 18, South Sudan was able to administer the nearly all of the 60,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine they had in stock through a series of smart investments in delivery, training, and social mobilization coordinated with several different partners. As new doses are projected to arrive in country in August, South Sudan continues to reinforce gaps in the health systems to make COVID-19 vaccinations possible without disrupting existing health services.

CARE’s estimated delivery costs from “tarmac to arm”1 for vaccines in these areas are $9.97 per dose of vaccine administered, or $22.22 per person fully vaccinated.

This is six times more expensive than current global estimate for delivery costs. For some actors providing vaccinations in South Sudan, the cost has been as high as $20 per dose administered when they include all costs. That’s because the health system in South Sudan is fragile, and it was already struggling to deliver even routine services. South Sudan is one of many health systems around the world that will need additional personnel, resources, and infrastructure to effectively deliver COVID-19 vaccines to at-risk populations, especially in hard-to-reach areas. The exact cost will continue to evolve as new vaccines arrive in country and the country vaccinates new groups of people. Read More...

GENDER AND COVID-19 VACCINES Listening to women-focused organizations in Asia and the Pacific

More than a year into the coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19 vaccines are being distributed across at least 176 countries, with over 1.7 billion doses administered worldwide. Combating the pandemic requires equitable distribution of safe and effective vaccines, however, women and girls are impacted by gaps both in the supply side and the demand side that hamper equitable distribution of the vaccine. Evidence reveals that 75 per cent of all vaccines have gone to just 10 countries, and only 0.3 per cent of doses have been administered in low-income countries. Very few of COVID-19 vaccines are going to those most vulnerable. The vaccine rollout in Asia and the Pacific has been relatively slow and staggered amid secondary waves of the virus. India, despite being the largest vaccine developer, has only vaccinated 3 per cent of the population and continues to battle a variant outbreak that, at its peak, was responsible for more than half of the world’s daily COVID-19 cases and set a record-breaking pace of about 400,000 cases per day.5However, the small Pacific nation of Nauru, reported a world record administering the first dose to 7,392 people, 108 per cent of the adult population within four weeks. Bhutan also set an example by vaccinating 93 per cent of its eligible population in less than two weeks. That success could be at risk, given the situation in India and the suspended export of vaccines. Read More...

Rapid Assessment on COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake by Urban Marginalised Population in Bangladesh

As of 31 March 2021, there have been 127,877,462 confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide, including 2,796,561 deaths in 223 countries as reported by WHO. Bangladesh had 6,11,295 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 9,406 confirmed deaths till the end of March 2021. In response to this situation, the administration of the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine officially started on 7 February 2021 in the national hospitals and health complexes all over Bangladesh. Despite acute demand for the vaccine, a great deal of misinformation and misconception is also apparent among general people. With the ongoing vaccine administration, it is very important to understand community acceptance of COVID-19 vaccinations.
People’s knowledge, attitudes and perceptions towards COVID-19 are of utmost importance for Government and policymakers to address all barriers to vaccine uptake and ensuring that everyone has access to vaccine. With these contexts, this survey aims to identify the overall COVID-19 vaccination perceptions among the urban marginalized population in Bangladesh based on three main objectives:
 Understanding the knowledge and practice related to COVID-19 prevention
 Assessing the knowledge and perspective regarding COVID-19 vaccination
program
 To know the status of vaccine uptake among marginalized population
The urban marginalized population were purposively selected, as they are more likely to be unaccounted for or have the least access to the COVID-19 vaccine administration process. In this survey, researchers captured only the population that are direct service recipient of the Urban Health Programme (garment workers and people who inject drug) and other groups who are available around the catchment areas of the service centres of the facilities. Read More...

Our Best Shot: Frontline Health Workers and COVID-19 Vaccines

Fully realizing the social and economic benefits of halting COVID-19 requires investing in a fast and fair global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. CARE estimates that for every $1 a country or donor government invests in vaccine doses, they need to invest $5.00 in delivering the vaccine.

Investments in frontline health workers are a critical component in this comprehensive vaccination cost. Of the $5.00 in delivery costs, $2.50 has to go to funding, training, equipping, and supporting health workers—especially women—who administer vaccines, run education campaigns, connect communities to health services, and build the trust required for patients to get vaccines. For these investments to work, they must pay, protect and respect women frontline health workers and their rights—a cost that is largely absent from recent WHO estimates on vaccine rollout costs. No current global conversations or guidance on vaccine costs includes the full cost of community health workers or long-term personnel costs.

Investing in a fast and fair global vaccine distribution will save twice as many lives as maximizing vaccine doses for the wealthiest countries in the world. Even better, investing in vaccine equality will speed up economic recoveries in every country in the world. For every $1 invested in vaccines in less wealthy countries, wealthy countries will see $4.80 of economic benefit because economies can fully re-open sooner. Failing to make this investment could cost wealthy economies $4.5 trillion in economic losses.

Current global debates are focused so narrowly on equitable access to for vaccine doses that they largely overlook the importance of delivering vaccines—and the key role women frontline health workers play in vaccine delivery. Of 58 global policy statements on vaccines, only 10 refer to the costs of delivery at all—and these are primarily technical advisories from the World Health Organization. No government donors are discussing the importance of vaccine delivery systems that are necessary to ending COVID-19. Only one statement—from Norway—refers to the importance of women health workers as part of the solution to ending COVID-19.

As new and dangerous strains of COVID-19 emerge in countries that are struggling to access the vaccine and control the pandemic, every day we wait for fair global vaccination allows for more contagious strains that spread around the world. The more chances the virus has to mutate in non-vaccinated populations, the higher the risk for everyone. Comprehensive global vaccine delivery plans that make sure the vaccine gets to people who need it—and that those people are ready to get the vaccine when it arrives—are the only way to end this threat. No one is safe until everyone is safe.
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Evaluation finale de l’Initiative Maman Lumière II de CARE Niger

Dans le cadre de son projet Initiative Maman Lumière II, CARE International en partenariat avec l'Institut National de la Statistique (INS) a organisé une enquête d'évaluation de fin de projet du 4 au 15 janvier 2020.

En 2016, une enquête de base a été réalisée dans l'ensemble des villages d'intervention du projet. Cette enquête avait pour objectif de doter le projet d'indicateurs de référence qui serviront d'éléments de comparaison à la fin du projet afin d'informer les acteurs et le bayer des progrès réalisés en trois années de vie du projet.
L'enquête d'évaluation finale à concerner tous les villages d'intervention du projet. Cependant, pour des questions sécuritaires, 18 villages du département de Madarounfa n'ont pas été couvert par l'opération.

La méthodologie utilisée pour cette étude est basée sur un sondage par grappe à deux degrés. Les populations cibles sont définies selon les modules : les enfants de 6 à 59 mois et les femmes de 45 à 49 pour l'anthropométrie, les enfants de 0 à 23 mois pour l'ANJE, les enfants de 0 à 11 mois pour la vaccination.

La collecte des données a été effectuée sur des tablettes avec l'application ODK (Open Data Kit). L'analyse des données est effectuée sur ENA for SMART et STATA. Read More...

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