Caregivers in Mozambique want their children to be fully vaccinated, but often physical and social barriers stand in their way. Just ask Esselina, a mother living in a rural area of Zambézia Province.1 She wants her 2.5-year-old twin daughters to be healthy and knew that fully vaccinating them was their best defence.
"On the days that we have to take the child to vaccination, we have to get food and water to leave with the [other] children who will stay at home one day before, because the trip to the hospital is no joke."
But, despite her intentions and efforts, her twins never completed their routine immunisations – an outcome not unusual in the Namarroi and Gilé districts of Zambézia Province, where one out of every five children who start their immunisations never complete them
Alphonsus Odumu 6 d
Mozambique