Rasmata Ouédraogo, a grandmother champion of vaccination in Burkina Faso
Vaccines save children's lives.
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Vaccines save children's lives. That's the conviction of Rasmata Ouedraogo, 55, who had her two grandchildren vaccinated in the small town of Bama, 25 kilometres from Bobo Dioulasso.
Sunday 16 March was a lucky day for Rasmata Ouadraogo. Her grandchildren, Amadou and Rasmata, were able to get vaccinated on this third consecutive day, when their grandmother woke up very early to get them ready and go to the Vallée du Kou Health and Social Promotion Centre. Here, thousands of other children aged between 09 and 59 months have also been vaccinated against measles and rubella.
Rasmata Ouedraogo, 55, has been looking after her two grandchildren since their mother, a primary school teacher, was posted to the primary school in Mororaba, a village on the border with Mali: "I asked her to leave the children here in Bama, because the village where she works is experiencing security problems. So when the vaccination campaign was announced, I absolutely had to go and vaccinate my grandchildren myself, because by the time their mother came back to do it, the campaign would be over. So I took them out again today to have them vaccinated", says the grandmother.
In mid-February 2024, Burkina Faso recorded 1,714 suspected cases of measles. To respond effectively, the government has implemented a two-phase national response plan to vaccinate children aged between 09 and 59 months, with logistical and technical support from UNICEF.
"We've seen a huge mobilisation of women to have their children vaccinated. For a target of 3,720 children to be vaccinated, we vaccinated many more, achieving a rate of over 107% in our commune", explains Abdramane Diané, Itinerant Health Agent and vaccinator at La Vallée du Kou CSPS.
Among the thousands of children vaccinated is Abdoul, aged 05 months, whose father took him for his Penta3. "I think that fathers should also work with their wives to get their children vaccinated. All children need to be vaccinated, because that way they are protected against certain infectious diseases", says Abasse Sankara, father of little Abdoul. By 2023, according to statistics from Burkina Faso's Expanded Programme on Immunisation, the various vaccination campaigns had covered more than 90% of children under one year of age with the Penta3 vaccine.
Vaccination saves children's lives by immunising them against disease.
In her neighbourhood, in sector 4 of the town of Bama, Rasmata Ouedraogo is known as the mother of vaccination: "I've had five children of my own, but I've brought up more than seven children whom I've vaccinated and sent to school. Today, some of them are working, others are married in different towns in Burkina Faso". Like Rasmata Ouedraogo's two grandchildren, more than 3,311,000 children aged between 09 and 59 months were vaccinated against measles during the March 2024 campaign.
