Vaccines have saved millions of lives, but today’s global immunization programs face new threats—and digital health technology is offering community-driven solutions to protect the most vulnerable.
The global immunization challenge: Why digital solutions are needed now
Over 150 million.
That’s how many lives the World Health Organisation estimates have been saved by vaccines over the last 50 years. Six lives a minute, every day, for five decades.
Yet, around the world, decades of progress are at risk. Misinformation is spreading, humanitarian crises are disrupting surveillance programs, booster doses are being missed. Preventable diseases that have long been held at bay are making a resurgence.
This pivotal point requires a smart solution: digitally driven, community-delivered care.
From paper registers to digital innovation: Kenya’s community health transformation
Susan Kivondo has seen a lot of change over the past two decades. In 2005, she became the coordinator of community health services for Nairobi’s Makadara Sub-County—a new initiative within Kenya’s primary healthcare program.
“We realized that the burden of disease was going up instead of down, because communities were not being involved,” she explains.
Her team selected community health workers (CHWs) from every village, each responsible for visiting 100 households. They captured information in a paper register, including the household members, children, water access, and child immunizations.
But Susan and her team found analyzing the data extremely difficult. The information was spread—and often duplicated—across multiple heavy logbooks, rendering it unusable.
Then, in 2023, the Kenya government launched the national electronic Community Health Information System (eCHIS). It’s a digital application designed collaboratively by the CHU4UHC coalition of partners and powered by the Community Health Toolkit (CHT).
CHT supports CHWs to deliver essential healthcare services as they travel door to door, including critical care for mothers, newborns, children, and families—including support for immunizations. And, critically for Susan, it allows CHWs to track patients and capture near real-time data.
“This digital platform gives us the true picture of the village,” Susan says. “For 62,000 households in Makadara, I’m able to tell you which village has the highest number of children under five and where I need to do immunization outreach. Earlier on I couldn’t tell you—I would do outreach on guesswork because I don’t have the individual data per village.”
Kenya has a booster for the measles and rubella vaccine. However, eCHIS revealed that most mothers were not aware of its existence.
“Through eCHIS we were able to realize that more than 40% of children here in Makadara had not been immunized against measles and rubella 2. So we organized outreach and we were able to get more than 10% of children that had missed out. We traced them through eCHIS and we focused on the villages that had more children under five, so the resources from our partner UNICEF would be directed to the right village.”
Using technology to improve childhood vaccination coverage: Uganda's own eCHIS journey
The government of Uganda is also leveraging the CHT to address immunization gaps. The Ministry of Health created, launched and scaled their own national eCHIS alongside in-country organizations including Medic, Living Goods, BRAC, and Malaria Consortium.
“Uganda has a large number of under-immunized children, and it is only through digital technologies like eCHIS that we are able to track them and get them immunized,” says Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng Ocero, Minister of Health for Uganda. “We use digital solutions right from the villages to track these children and link them up to the facilities.
“We can also use the tool to store a huge amount of data and analyze it to enable planning, programming, and implementation. We believe that digital technologies are the way to go in improving the immunization system in Uganda.”
Global progress: the CHT is expanding its reach and impact
In 2024, more than 170,000 health workers across 21 countries used CHT-powered apps to assess the immunization status of over two million people, preventing unnecessary deaths among the most vulnerable.
In Mali, whenever community health worker Hawa Koné sets off on rounds, her digital tablet—and DISC-Mali, her CHT-powered app—always comes with her.
“It always reminds me that there are things you have to do today—this child needs a follow-up, this child needs a vaccination, and this woman has a prenatal consultation or a due date,” Hawa says. “If it wasn’t for this tablet reminding us of the date, we could miss it. Digital tools make our tasks easier.”
The information Hawa collects is then sent to Dr. Sali Tounkara, the National Lead for Essential Community Care within Mali’s Ministry of Health and Public Hygiene.
“DISC-Mali helps coordinate the efforts of health workers, collects real-time data, enables decisions to be made, and strengthens the monitoring and evaluation system for community interventions,” she explains.
“Now I have this data, I feel very good,” finishes Susan. “I feel it’s made my work easy. It’s also made my decision-making easy, not only for me and not only for now, but for now and for the future.”
Banner photo credit © Annie Risemberg/Muso
As longtime immunization practioner in great Nebbi District, from 1995-2009, then from 2010-2019 in Zombo, then from 2020 to date in Warr HCIV Zombo as Cold chain Assistant in Nebbi, Cold Chain Technician in Zombo and EPI FP in Warr, l recommend the eCHIS is worth implementing. Thanks for the innovation