Infant immunisation is currently central to national and international policy agendas to tackle ill health and poverty in Africa, and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals in reducing childhood mortality and tackling infectious disease. Major funding initiatives for distributing existing children’s vaccines and developing new ones, whether through aid mechanisms such as the International Finance Facility, or public-private partnerships such as the Vaccine Fund of the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), testify to current international interest and commitment.
Such initiatives come at a time when routine immunisation rates have been stagnant or falling in many Sub-Saharan African countries. Redressing such declines, and ensuring that proposed expansion of immunisation programmes is effective and sustainable, have thus become key issues of policy deliberation which needs to be informed by a thorough understanding of the factors shaping immunisation delivery and acceptance in contemporary African health systems.
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