When the town crier announced that strangers would shortly be arriving in Bopo this March to vaccinate the village children, Shangceline Atia was elated.
“This is the first time they are being vaccinated,” she said of her children, aged 7, 5, and 2. With conflict ongoing in southwestern Cameroon and armed insurgents occupying the surrounding forest, the village rarely received visitors, and health workers had been unable to access the area for almost a decade.
Atia’s children are among the around 14.5 million globally who have not received their first routine vaccine, DTP1. Known as “zero-dose” children, around 55% live in conflict-affected regions, which are often inaccessible to national immunization programs.