Who We Are
ECAVI is an initiative of health professionals and organizations brought together with the main aim of increasing awareness; research and training and supporting health systems towards improved coverage and uptake of vaccines in Eastern Africa (including the five EAC member states)
What We Do
- We work with and through professional medical associations to promote and encourage the use/ uptake of current vaccines and new vaccines to improve vaccine coverage in Eastern Africa.
- We do this through supporting advocacy, training, capacity building, vaccine data management and health systems, product development, continued research and utilization of new vaccine research findings on vaccines in Eastern Africa.
Our Activities
ECAVI plays a leading role in organizing continuous medical education activities on Vaccines and immunization. These activities include:
ECAVI closely partners with the WHO, GAVI, UNICEF and individual country EPI programs in the region to support and promote immunization activities, launch new vaccines and update immunization schedules for recommended EPI vaccines in the Eastern Africa region.
To promote and encourage the use of current vaccines and uptake of new vaccines; and improved vaccine uptake/coverage in Eastern Africa through supporting advocacy, training, capacity building, vaccine data management and health systems, product development, continued research and utilisation of new vaccine research findings on vaccines in Eastern Africa.
An Eastern Africa free of vaccine-preventable diseases and cancers.
- One more child saved from pneumonia death through vaccination.
- One more child save from diarrheal death through vaccination.
- One more woman saved from cervical cancer through vaccination.
- One more child save from measles death through vaccination.
- One more health professional advocating and promoting vaccines in Eastern Africa.
- One more East African informed about the importance of and embracing vaccines.
- To collaborate with the various government ministries of Health, EPIs, professional medical associations, medical training institutions, vaccine manufacturers/promoters/dispensers and the general public with the aim of promoting the use of vaccines and immunisation services within Eastern Africa member states.
- To share and provide up to date information on policy and guidelines for use of vaccines in Eastern Africa.
- To promote strategies to increase immunisation coverage, vaccine uptake and reporting of vaccine related statistics in Eastern Africa.
- Participate in dissemination of reliable up-to date and accurate evidence-based information and educational resources about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases to health professionals, the general public and scientific community in Eastern Africa.
- To advocate and lobby for the inclusion of new vaccines into national EPIs within Eastern Africa member states.
- To encourage and participate in research and teaching on vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases in medical training institutions within Eastern Africa.
- To collaborate and leverage support from existing civil society platforms engaged in vaccination and immunization activities.
Message from Director
The East Africa Centre for Vaccines and Immunization (ECAVI) is an initiative of health professionals, working with and through the Paediatric Associations in Eastern Africa, to promote advocacy, training, research and improving and strengthening immunization health systems; and promoting improved uptake and training on new and available vaccines; towards the control of morbidity and mortality associated with vaccine preventable diseases and cancers in Eastern Africa (including the six EAC member states Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, DRC, Tanzania and Uganda, plus Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia)
While we acknowledge that a lot has been done to improve coverage and understanding about vaccines and immunizations in Eastern Africa, there are some gaps, which could still be filled. Burundi, Somalia and South Sudan are countries emerging out of periods of prolonged conflict and displacements, with weak child survival and immunization health systems, and require urgent focus and support to improve immunization systems.
At the East Africa Centre for Vaccines and Immunization (ECAVI), a community-centered grassroots organization, we have been involved in communities in Kenya and Uganda, with the main aim of improving the number of children who live to see their 5th birthday and beyond. As you know, this proportion remains significantly low in the sub-Saharan region, owed mainly to high rates of vaccine-preventable diseases.
We have experience in rural and urban Kenya and Uganda settings. Our recent research has focused on informal settlements, where the vast majority of the neglected and unreached populations exist. We are increasingly concerned at the rising population of young single mothers in this population, the majority of whom are unemployed and who have not completed formal education. This 15 – 35-year population is now involved increasingly in substance abuse, suicides, and crime.
We realize that our goals to improve child survival must center around not just immunization, but female empowerment, female education, and provision of food, fresh water, and sanitation among other initiatives that seek to make the mothers better empowered to support their children. Providing dignified employment to these mothers and skill sets that provide sustainable income generation is our biggest concern.
We also support Masters and PhD students in Eastern Africa Universities in designing and carrying out research (dissertations) in immunizations and immunization health systems, and encourage the utilization of new research findings on current and newer vaccines into existing programs for vaccination and immunization within Eastern Africa.
We can’t do this alone, we can’t achieve these goals alone, but time has come for Africa to find solutions to African problems, or at least attempt to; and so, we appeal for you to join this initiative, and additionally offer your good will, financial and technical support, feedback, positive criticism, and solidarity in this noble cause.
ECAVI TUKO PAMOJA (ECAVI we are together)!