This community innovation has been accepted at the 2025 DHIS2 Annual Conference
The Use of DHIS2 for the Immunization Big Catch-up
The Big Catch-up (BCU) is a global initiative launched in April 2023 to close immunity gaps caused by the backsliding of immunization coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic. To support countries in preparing for and monitoring BCU progress, the IA2030 Data Strengthening and Use Working Group and BCU task force developed the monitoring guidance and readiness indicators. These guidelines outline child eligibility criteria and encourage countries to adapt existing tools and implement real-time monitoring systems to track doses administered and report program outcomes. DHIS2 has been widely adopted as a key platform for meeting BCU monitoring requirements, with countries applying different approaches. Mozambique and Somalia adapted their national DHIS2 instances to track zero-dose and under-immunized children and monitor program indicators. Mozambique vaccinated 524, 383 zero-dose children and administered 2 million catch-up doses during three waves of multi-antigen campaigns. Somalia tracked the administration of 1.4 million vaccine doses to zero-dose and under-immunized children. These examples highlight how tailored DHIS2 adaptations enhance monitoring and decision-making. To further support countries, UNICEF partnered with UiO to develop a customizable DHIS2 Big Catch-up aggregate module. This module offers harmonized tools and guidance for adapting DHIS2 to support BCU campaign activities or routinely monitor catch-up indicators. These efforts enable countries to integrate catch-up data into their routine immunization systems, restoring immunization coverage and making catch-up vaccination a cornerstone of resilient health systems. In this presentation, we highlight program outcomes, challenges, lessons learned, and systems limitations from countries that adapted DHIS2 to support mapping of zero-dose children and aggregate reporting of catch-up program indicators.
Primary Author: Cristina Lussiana
Keywords:
Expanded Programme on Immunization; Big Catch-up; Data for decision-making; Sub-national level data use; Analytics
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