Download logoHaruna Darboe stood beside the weighing scale, watching closely as a health worker recorded his three-month-old daughter's weight before administering her routine vaccinations at Serekunda Health Centre. As a first-time father, the moment carried more meaning than a routine clinic visit. It was reassurance that he was doing everything he could to protect his child.
“As a first-time father, I want to do everything possible to protect my child,” he said. “Seeing my baby receive vaccines gives me confidence that she is growing up with the protection she needs.”
Haruna’s experience reflects a broader effort underway across The Gambia to ensure children receive the life-saving vaccines they need to survive and thrive. During a recent Gavi mission to the country, members of the delegation visited Serekunda Health Centre alongside officials from the Ministry of Health, WHO, UNICEF and other partners. They met families, spoke with frontline health workers and observed how immunization services are helping protect communities against vaccine-preventable diseases.
The impact of vaccination begins even before a child is born.
During a routine antenatal care visit, expectant mother Oumou Trawally received vaccines designed to protect both her and her unborn baby. “Getting vaccinated during pregnancy gives me confidence that I am protecting myself and my baby,” she said. “It is one of the first things I can do to ensure my child has a healthy start in life.”
From pregnancy through childhood and adolescence, vaccination provides a continuum of protection, helping families safeguard their health at every stage of life. Yet like many countries, The Gambia experienced disruptions to routine immunization during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving some children with missed doses. In response, the Ministry of Health, through the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), with support from Gavi and partners, intensified efforts to identify and vaccinate those children.
Between January 2025 and March 2026, six nationwide rounds of Periodic Intensified Routine Immunization reached thousands of children, delivering more than 103,000 pentavalent, 76,000 measles-rubella and 108,000 oral polio vaccine doses to children across the country. “The numbers tell an important story, but they do not tell the whole story,” said Dr Oumie Jagne, WHO’s Global Polio Eradication and Immunization Officer in The Gambia. “Behind every child vaccinated is a family protected from the devastating consequences of vaccine-preventable diseases.”
At Serekunda Health Centre, health worker Ebrima Jawara sees the difference in how health workers engage families. “We are seeing improvements in how we identify children who miss appointments and how we engage communities,” he said. “Parents are becoming more aware of the importance of vaccination, and health workers have received support to improve planning, monitoring and follow-up.”
For Sain Sillah, those improvements have made it easier to keep her six-month-old baby on schedule with routine vaccinations. Holding her child during a clinic visit, she described the reassurance that comes from knowing what vaccines her baby needs and when to return. “Knowing when to come back and what vaccines my baby needs gives me peace of mind that I am doing the right thing for my child’s health,” she said.
But protecting children also means knowing who may have been missed. WHO’s nationwide monitoring visited 4,311 households and assessed 3,913 children, helping health teams better understand where gaps remain.
The benefits of immunization extend beyond childhood. In 2026, the same commitment extended to adolescent girls, with 47,208 HPV vaccine doses delivered nationwide, achieving 108.7% coverage and helping protect them from cervical cancer later in life. The country has also conducted a comprehensive review of its Expanded Programme on Immunization, assessed its Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus Elimination status, updated its National Immunization Policy and implemented the Big Catch Up to strengthen efforts to reach zero-dose and chronically missed children.
These achievements demonstrate what sustained investment in immunization can mean for families: children protected from preventable diseases, parents empowered to make informed decisions, and health workers better equipped to reach those who need vaccination.
Sustaining this progress will require continued investment in community engagement, follow-up systems, health-worker capacity and data quality as The Gambia and its partners prepare for the next phase of Gavi 6.0 (2026–2030) support.
For families like Haruna’s, Oumou’s and Sain’s, immunization is about more than doses delivered. It is the confidence of a first-time father protecting his baby, an expectant mother taking an early step towards a healthy start, and a mother knowing when to return to keep her baby protected.
Through its partnership with The Gambia, Gavi is helping strengthen the health workers, systems and services that make this protection possible — one child, one family and one vaccination at a time.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of WHO Regional Office for Africa.
