Childhood vaccination coverage in Guinea-Bissau is really low. 19% of boys and girls have never received any vaccine and only 70% of them have the third dose against diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough.
Vaccination in Guinea Bissau is key to the survival of adults and children. In the community of Canhanque (in the Gabú region) the closest hospital is more than 5 kilometers away and since families do not have means of transportation to get around and have to do so on foot, Unicef carries out mass vaccination sessions and door-to-door visits to follow up on the vaccination guidelines of the little ones.
Diseases eradicated elsewhere in the world cause thousands of deaths in Guinea-Bissau
They are immunized against diseases that have already been eradicated in much of the world such as polio, meningitis, measles, but they are also vaccinated against malaria or yellow fever. And when this happens, once a month, the entire community attends the event as if it were an important ceremony. In addition, Unicef is also working to end the myth that pregnant women cannot receive vaccines.
It is estimated that in Guinea-Bissau one in five minors has not had any type of vaccine for reasons beyond their control: the very limited access to healthcare in rural areas that worsens in the rainy season, the fragility of the health system, extreme poverty (which affects three out of four minors) and the political instability that has become chronic in the country since the coup d’état in November 2025.
According to Unicef data, two thirds of the population of Guinea-Bissau lives below the poverty line
Canhanque is a small neighborhood in Gabú with just over 860 inhabitants, of which 149 are children. Sadia, one of the nurses who travels there every month, admits that her work is key to the survival of children and adolescents. “I think the true importance of this is that there are mothers with very poor economic conditions who cannot take their children to the health center. When we come, it helps them a lot, there are children who are very late in their vaccinations and that entails a lot of danger,” he says.
The community health agent, Mammadi Danfa, is in charge of making door-to-door visits to supervise the health of children and pregnant women, control their vaccination schedule and perform malaria tests on children with fever to prevent the disease from getting worse and ending up killing them.
Another of the nurses who travel every month to this small community on the border with Senegal, Reinaldo, tells us that mothers are the first ones interested in their children having vaccines. “They know the importance of vaccination and they want their children to be immune to diseases. But the only difficulty is not the will, but the inability to travel.”
Tamara is 18 years old and has a 13-month-old daughter. She cannot go to the health center because it is too far away and she cannot be away from the community for so many hours, but when it is necessary to go to the doctor – even if it is an emergency – she walks an hour and a half to get there and another hour and a half to return with her daughter Rumaisa in tow.
Vaccines work and are synonymous with health
Taisiña, another young woman from this remote community of Gabú, recognizes that “thanks to vaccines, children can prevent many diseases,” while Bintu – who does not have children – offers herself to the rest of the women in the community to supervise that the children have their vaccines up to date. “What I do is control the immunization schedule, explain to mothers the importance of keeping the vaccination record and remind them that their children cannot drink water before 6 months of age,” she tells us. And he admits that when the Unicef teams arrive in Canhanque it is one of the most important events for the community because vaccines are synonymous with health.
