Fast tracking Covid-19 vaccinations for adolescents in Micronesia

Through the FSM Immunisation Programme, the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) Government is targeting 70% of the population to be vaccinated in order to boost public health and open up borders. One of the target groups for vaccination is adolescents in schools. The FSM is one of the first countries in the world to receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for children. In Yap State, together with UNICEF Pacific and Akvo, the team achieved the highest level of vaccination among children in FSM.

Above: Photo by UNICEFPacific/2021/Dores. The Government of Japan, UNICEF, and The Government of the Federated States of Micronesia during the project launching.


Partners

UNICEF Pacific

FSM Government

FSM Country Office

Department of Health and Social Affairs

Department of Education


Locations

Federated States of Micronesia


Sector

Health


Services

Data collection

Data visualisation


Tools

Akvo Flow

The challenge

In late 2021, the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) Immunisation Programme launched the Pfizer vaccine for children in Yap State. The Department of Health and Social Affairs and the Department of Education aimed to give all children between the ages of 12 and 17 the opportunity to get vaccinated against COVID-19. In order to track progress of the vaccinations in schools, the programme needed real time, high quality data on the number of students and location of schools receiving vaccines.

The solution

The Department of Health and Social Services and the Department of Education worked with Akvo to record vaccination data from the schools to show real-time progress. Akvo supported the team in collecting, monitoring, and visualising the data on a real-time dashboard. This helped not only to accurately track progress for reporting, but to incite action when vaccine uptake was low in certain schools and certain locations.

The impact

Using Akvo’s data platform, the immunisation programme was able to visualise the vaccine data to show progress to the stakeholders, with Yap State leading the highest state in FSM of vaccinated students. From the latest data (March 2022), 27.7% of FSM children are fully vaccinated (children aged between 5 to 11 years). With the highest in the States of Yap and Kosrae, with rates at 42.4% and 38.4% respectively, and lowest in the States of Pohnpei and Chuuk, with rates at 30.3% and 20.3% respectively.