Vaccines Delivered to the Doorstep

In her little house, this old lady lives with her sons and grandchildren. Age and sickness limit her movement outside the house, and with no internet access, she only heard about COVID-19 vaccine through her family and visiting neighbors.

In February 2022, a nurse knocked at her door saying that she doesn’t have to go the healthcare unit of her village in Menoufeya to get vaccinated. The vaccine will be delivered to her doorstep.

This lady was among over 100,000 people with limited mobility who got vaccinated through home visits in Egypt due to senility, illness and disabilities. The concept of mobile teams was planned by the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) in Egypt to increase access of vaccination to the most deprived people living in Egypt (Egyptians and non-Egyptians). The ministry also dedicated teams of community leaders to do home visits for vaccine awareness as part of the ‘door knocking’ campaign.

Mobile teams are sent to carry out a time-limited vaccination campaign in remote areas with low vaccination rates. Few days before the campaign starts in each village, a car with a microphone roams the village’s roads announcing the date and location of the campaign and encouraging people to get vaccinated.

A ‘vaccination caravan’ arrives and stays at the same location in each village for a couple of days. Citizens get vaccinated inside the caravan via qualified healthcare professionals who received capacity building training by UNICEF.

To encourage people to go to the caravan for vaccination and identify the special cases that need to be vaccinated at home, trained community leaders do home visits during the time of the campaign. During these home visits, community leaders address rumors around the vaccine and help villagers register for it.

Among the most challenging misconceptions was the safety of vaccines on pregnant and breastfeeding mothers. Thanks to the GAVI-supported training they received by UNICEF, community leaders use authentic information they learned in their conversation with the women in the village. Some also share their own personal experiences as pregnant and lactating mothers who trusted the vaccine and took it to protect themselves and their babies.

In Menoufeya, caravans and home visits reached more than 300 villages and more than 810,000 citizens got vaccinated in February 2022. Significantly, many children eligible for vaccination got their first doses despite all the concerns their parents had before they were reassured by the visiting community leaders about vaccine safety.

In Egypt, 44 million people were vaccinated with at least one dose, and 31 million with two doses as of April 2022. UNICEF continues to support MoHP in all its efforts to keep everyone in Egypt safe by facilitating the delivery of vaccines as well as cold chain equipment like vaccine refrigerators, vaccine carriers, ice boxes, refrigerated trucks, cold rooms, and ultra-cold temperature freezers.

As the country received, thanks to UNICEF and COVAX facility support, 85.5 million doses of AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines doses between Spring 2021 and 2022, Egypt alone received more than 8% of the total number of vaccines doses delivered by COVAX globally.