• Around 18.3 million vaccinated across 36 countries
• Participating nations account for 60 per cent of zero-dose children worldwide
ISLAMABAD: Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, WHO, and Unicef announced on Friday that the “Big Catch-Up” (BCU), a historic multi-year, multi-country effort to address vaccination declines driven largely by the Covid-19 pandemic, has reached an estimated 18.3 million children aged 1 to 5 across 36 countries.
More than 100 million doses of life-saving vaccines have been administered, helping to narrow critical immunity gaps. Pakistan has immensely benefited from the BCU.
The 36 participating BCU countries across Africa and Asia currently account for 60 per cent of all zero-dose children worldwide. Pandemic-related disruptions to immunisation programmes exacerbated this issue, adding millions more zero-dose children to those who already chronically missed out.
To address this, the BCU looked beyond infant immunisation and, for the first time, systematically leveraged routine immunisation systems to make significant progress in reaching older children aged 1 to 5. These children are considered “older” because they should have received critical routine vaccines before the age of one but remain vulnerable due to missed vaccinations, according to a UN press release.
Among the participating countries, 12 — Burkina Faso, North Korea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritania, Niger, Pakistan, Somalia, Togo, Tanzania, and Zambia — reported reaching more than 60 per cent of zero-dose children under the age of five who had previously missed the first dose of the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTP1) vaccine.
While these 36 countries received Gavi funding and technical assistance from WHO and Unicef through the BCU, many other countries also implemented activities during this period to accelerate efforts to reach missed children and restore immunisation services following pandemic-related setbacks.
“As the largest-ever international effort to reach missed children with life-saving vaccines, the Big Catch-Up shows what is possible when governments, partners, and communities work together to protect the most vulnerable in society,” said Dr Sania Nishtar, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
“By protecting children who missed out on vaccinations because of disruptions to health services caused by Covid-19, the Big Catch-Up has helped undo one of the pandemic’s major negative consequences,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“Vaccinations save lives,” said Unicef Executive Director Catherine Russell. “This initiative shows what is possible when countries have the resources, tools, and political will to reach children with life-saving vaccines. We’ve caught up with some of the children who missed routine vaccinations during the pandemic — but many more remain out of reach.”
Published in Dawn, April 25th, 2026
