“I called each of my children to make sure they take my grandchildren for polio vaccination,” this is how serious polio vaccination is to Faith Daudi Malungo, a grandmother resident of Mkoka village in Kongwa Tanzania.

Concerned that the current generation of young parents may not take polio seriously because they may not have seen a polio patient she did for her immediate family, what health promotion and behavior change personnel were doing for the whole nation, on behalf of all children under five years old.

With support from Bill and Melinda Foundation and Rotary International, the World Health Organization provided technical support to the campaign through training of campaign supervisors at national level to district level, facilitation of supervision of the campaign and management of data generated from the campaign.

Despite a stellar coverage of routine vaccination Tanzania organized a supplemental polio vaccination on the backdrop low reception of COVID-19 vaccination. Additionally, antivax content, praising hesitancy in COVID-19 vaccination circulated and linked upcoming polio vaccination with COVID-19 vaccines.

“It was important to dissociate the hesitancy from COVID-19 and bridge knowledge gaps about reality of the polio disease,” said Lotalis Gadau, Communication Officer, vaccination programme.

The success of the two rounds of the supplemental polio vaccination banked the general receptive attitude towards vaccination and intensive public awareness campaign.

The second round of supplemental polio vaccination is part of four rounds of synchronized campaigns aimed at prevent possibility of the spread of polio in countries bordering Malawi and Mozambique that have each reported a case of wild polio in February and April this year respectively. In Tanzania the second round covered all 195 districts and ran from 18-21^st May.

Tanzania and other countries bordering Malawi conducted supplemental polio vaccination after a case reported in Malawi in February 2022 and another one in Mozambique in April this year.

The second round of supplemental polio vaccination is part of four rounds of synchronized campaigns aimed to prevent possibility of the spread of polio in countries bordering Malawi and Mozambique that have each reported a case of wild polio.

The approaches used to mobilize a positive reception to polio vaccines included meetings held at high level (ministerial) to grass roots, live programs, and announcements on mass media (radio and TV and newspapers), notification letters, leader announcements, mobile vans announcements, town criers’ announcements and door to door visits.

“We recalled earlier success of the routine vaccination and asked people to join in maintaining polio free Tanzania,” says Lotalis Gadau, Tanzania has been giving polio vaccination since 1975.

During the first round, conducted between 24-27 March 2022, a total of 5100 social mobilizers (most of them being community health workers and local community leaders) and 530 town criers trained to raise awareness by visiting households. In addition, 26 national and local radio stations were engaged to broadcast Polio messages.

The second round of supplemental vaccination up scaled the efforts and diversified more.

During the preparation of the campaign meetings were conducted from high level at ministerial level, regional, district, ward, and village level. At district level, PHC committee were pivotal. The PHC committee comprise of head of each department in the district level, religious leaders, media and influential person in the communities and member of security committee of the district.

Launch events were organized at all levels on 18 May, that first day of the second round. The national launch officiated by the minister of health in Dodoma was broadcast live on nationwide TV and online TVs. Simultaneously each region and each district, each ward and each village conducted a launch event.

“The point was to raise interest in the community locally and to complement the local level interest with nationwide proclamations from national leaders about the importance of vaccination. I personally featured on 14 programs on national TV and radio where I responded to questions,” said Gadau.

More happened at subnational level. In Mbeya region for instance, Mr. Danford Barnabas, Region Immunization and vaccine Officer, said the region sent letters from the district director, directing ward development committee and village development committee to call village meetings to deliver messages about polio vaccination.

“We also sent official letters to churches and mosques asking leaders to promote the message to their congregations. School teachers were engaged to send message to households through school children.”

Two days before the campaign districts deployed mobile public announcements in district towns and suburbs to remind people of the date and time of the campaign and reminding them to invite vaccinators in their homes.

According to campaign data, households considered social mobilisers the key source of information, followed by radio and TV and religious leaders.

“My husband and I are willing after being sensitized to vaccinate our children. We want our children to be safe from Polio and we have no doubt at all about the vaccine”, said Gloria Magesa at Sogoso village, Sengerema district.

Tanzania completed the second round of supplemental polio vaccination and reached a total of 12,131,049 children against a target of 10,295,316 equivalent to 117.8%.

 “I am happy to cancel all my routine farm activities to vaccinate my two kids, “I will feel guilty if I do not vaccinate my children,” said Annita Komba in Ruvuma, Southern Tanzania.   

Based on the results of the completed second round, it is expected that the third round and fourth round are going to be equally successful, considering that 100% of households where vaccinators visited are informed of that a third and fourth round of supplemental polio vaccination is on the way.