Some children are missed not because a campaign failed, but because no one knew where to look for them. In Chad, where herding families move with their animals and settle in seasonal camps known as ferricks, finding every child means first knowing where every household is. Two field activities show how communities themselves are being brought into that work.
Communities remember what statistics cannot convey. During the second round of the Local Vaccination Days (JLV) against polio in Kérouané prefecture in the second quarter of 2026, one man told vaccination teams, a supervisor and the Prefectural Director of Health the same story — a story that explains, better than any message, why a single dose matters.
Behind every round of the Local Vaccination Days (JLV) against polio are the frontline workers who carry the vaccine to the last household. During the second round in Kérouané prefecture in the second quarter of 2026, one of them stood out — not for anything dramatic, but for the quiet discipline that decides whether a campaign reaches every child.
During the second round of the Local Vaccination Days (Journées Locales de Vaccination, JLV) against polio in Kérouané prefecture in the second quarter of 2026, the campaign found support at every level of the community — from the highest administrative authority in the prefecture down to households in the most remote sectors. Here, the prefect explains in his own words why a career soldier considers children's vaccination a matter of duty.
A campaign notebook from Kwango province, Democratic Republic of the Congo — how traditional, religious and provincial leadership, and a province full of schoolchildren, mobilised behind the polio response.
In Kandi, in Benin's northern Alibori department, Docasse Moutangou is 27 years old, married, a seamstress by trade, and the mother of a boy of one year and one month. She is also, without ever having been given the title, one of the most effective advocates for vaccination in her neighbourhood.
