Between January 2023 and April 2025, TAConnect worked with the Kano State Primary Health Care Board, with funding from the Pfizer Foundation, to accelerate vaccination uptake among children under two in 15 of the state’s zero-dose and high-burden LGAs. The project responded to a stark gap: Kano records one of Nigeria’s lowest rates of fully immunized children, at just 10%, with coverage below the national average across every major antigen. Because rotavirus-related diarrhoea is a major driver of under-five deaths, the work centred on lifting rotavirus and routine immunization uptake as a route to reducing that burden.
Rather than treat immunization in isolation, TAConnect approached it through a health systems strengthening lens, tackling both demand-side and supply-side barriers and building on its existing investments in primary health care and maternal and child health. The strategy combined system strengthening and service integration, human-centred design and SBCC to build community demand, and the leveraging of existing state platforms such as CHIPS, WDCs, and Group Antenatal Care.
By the close of the project, it had reached over 65,000 children under two across 90 health facilities, trained more than 300 health workers, and connected with 12,659 caregivers through integrated WASH, nutrition, and family-planning counselling, referring nearly 4,700 of them onward for services. The experience reinforced a clear lesson: in an era of shrinking funding, integrated wrap-around RMNCH services and real-time data proved to be a cost-efficient, sustainable, and more accountable way to deliver care.
