Enhanced Child Health Days

This project aims to improve the survival and well-being of children under the age of five in 15 African countries. The project seeks to deliver cost-effective life-saving nutrition and health services to children through semi-annual outreach events also known as Child Health Days. These outreach events are designed to deliver health and nutrition services to children who would not normally be reached by the regular health care system. The most common services provided by these outreach events are vitamin A supplementation to prevent blindness and reduce child mortality rates immunizations to prevent common childhood illnesses and de-worming medication to improve the nutrition and general health of children. This project builds on previous support to Child Health Days through ‘Scaling up Nutrition and Immunizations’ and ‘Child Health Days and Weeks’. The current project continues to support the Child Health Days delivery platform in countries where under-five mortality is high while increasing focus on building the capacity of national governments to integrate and deliver these interventions in the long term.

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) enhanced equitable coverage of child health immunization and nutrition services for children under five year of age in targeted countries; (2) improved sustainability and national ownership of child health immunization and nutrition services for children under five years of age in targeted countries; (3) improved capacity of national health systems to deliver integrated child health immunization and nutrition services; (4) increased knowledge and awareness of mothers and caregivers to demand child health immunization and nutrition services; (5) improved national capacity to manage health information systems; and (6) increased national capacity to plan and budget for child health immunization and nutrition services.