COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery Partnership Somalia

Start & End Date: 2022-Ongoing

Country/Countries: Somalia

Multilateral Institution(s) Involved: World Bank

Case Study: Available

At the end of June, Somalia exceeded the 10 per cent COVID-19 vaccination rate marking a turning point in the country’s vaccination drive considering the highly complex operating environment in the country, the fragile health system and widespread misinformation and disinformation during the initial phase of the COVID-19 vaccination roll-out. Progress has varied across states due to insecurity, a protracted election and competing health and non-health priorities (e.g. polio and droughts). In the initial phase of the COVID-19 vaccination roll-out, Somalia prioritised outreach to high-priority groups, including health workers, the elderly and hard-to-reach and marginalised populations. The country faced several challenges, such as low uptake of COVID-19 vaccines amongst women due to misinformation about the impact of vaccines, low uptake in rural areas, very low uptake among key population/marginalised groups like nomads and refugees.

The Delivery Partnership builds on existing resources to support the AMC 92 and focuses foremost on the 34 countries that were at or below 10% coverage in January 2022. Working closely with countries to understand bottlenecks to vaccination, the Delivery Partnership offers access to urgent operational funding, technical assistance and political engagement to rapidly scale up vaccination and monitor progress towards targets. In the initial phase of the COVID-19 vaccination roll-out, Somalia prioritised outreach to high-priority groups, including health workers, the elderly and hard-to-reach and marginalised populations. The country faced several challenges, such as low uptake of COVID-19 vaccines amongst women due to misinformation about the impact of vaccines, low uptake in rural areas, very low uptake among key population/marginalised groups like nomads, displaced persons and refugees. To counter these challenges, the country relied on the lessons learnt from polio vaccination, deploying outreach and mobile teams that included community and religious leaders, to reach marginalised populations (nomads, and IDPs) and rural communities. The Social Mobilisation Network (SOMNet) was instrumental in conducting house-to-house mobilisation and other activities to generate demand across the 19 regions of the country. Additionally, a social listening and rumour tracking mechanism was put in place to develop tailored strategies. Social media as well as other media channels were used to disseminate accurate COVID-19 information.

The CoVDP has supported Somalia in building its capacity to plan effectively at the sub-national level as well as disbursed US$ 7.3 million to fund the next vaccination campaign and continue national efforts to increase coverage.