By: Mohamed Jaward Nyallay, Strategic Communications Adviser (MOICE)
Sierra Leone has vaccinated an estimated 95 percent of children who had never previously received a vaccine, marking one of the most significant milestones yet in the Government’s 300 Days Campaign to reach Zero zero-dose children across the country.
The latest data from the Ministry of Health show that approximately 95 percent of the estimated 9,000 Zero zero-dose children identified when the campaign was launched in March have now received their first vaccination.
The progress brings Sierra Leone significantly closer to one of the central ambitions of the campaign: ensuring that every child, regardless of where they live, has access to life-saving vaccines and protection against preventable diseases.
The vaccination drive is part of the Government’s broader Triple Zero agenda—zero preventable maternal deaths, zero preventable child deaths and zero zero-dose children—and reflects an intensified effort to move beyond simply making vaccines available to actively finding children who have been missed by the health system.
The achievement is particularly significant because zero zero-dose children are often among the hardest to reach. They may live in remote communities, have limited access to health facilities or have been missed by routine immunization programs for a range of social and logistical reasons.
Rather than waiting for these children to come to health facilities, health workers have increasingly taken vaccination services into communities, using local data to identify children who have never received a vaccine and directing outreach efforts towards them.
The result is reflected in district-level performance, with some districts exceeding their targets.
But the significance of the campaign extends beyond the performance of individual districts. The 95 percent national figure suggests that the country is now within reach of eliminating a major gap in childhood immunization: children who have had no contact with the vaccination system at all.
From numbers to lives protected
For the Ministry of Health, the achievement represents more than a percentage on a dashboard. Each additional percentage point represents hundreds of children receiving protection that they previously did not have.
The campaign has therefore placed considerable emphasis on using data to measure progress, identify communities where children remain unreached and adjust interventions accordingly.
The approach is consistent with the Government’s wider effort to make preventive healthcare a more central part of Sierra Leone’s health system.
Minister of Health Dr. Austin Demby has praised health workers across the country for their commitment to reaching mothers and children, urging them to sustain the momentum as the campaign progresses.
“We can get to zero, with what we have built and the effort and professionalism our nurses, doctors are putting in,” Dr. Demby said during a meeting with health professionals.
The 95 percent vaccination rate comes as the campaign approaches its later stages, leaving a relatively small but important group of zero zero-dose children still to be reached.
That final gap could prove more difficult than the first 95 percent. The children who remain unvaccinated are likely to be among those facing the greatest barriers to accessing routine health services, making targeted community engagement and persistent outreach particularly important.
Health authorities are therefore encouraging districts that have already exceeded their targets to maintain their efforts, while calling on others to intensify the search for children who remain outside the vaccination system.
The achievement provides a measure of how far the 300 Days Campaign has come—but also clarifies the task ahead.
If the campaign succeeds in reaching the remaining five percent, Sierra Leone will have taken a significant step towards its ambition of ensuring that no child is left behind in the country’s vaccination programme.
And in the broader pursuit of Triple Zero, that distinction matters: every child reached represents not just a successful vaccination, but one less child exposed to preventable illness and death.