The United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC), in partnership with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is set to begin a nationwide measles and rubella vaccination catch-up campaign, targeting 100 million Nigerian children from October 2025.
The US CDC said it facilitated Nigeria’s access to a Gavi grant of nearly $33 million to vaccinate children aged 9 months to 15 years across the country as part of efforts to strengthen measles surveillance and outbreak response effort to detect, respond and end measles outbreaks, rapidly.
Measles remains a major cause of childhood illness and death globally, with Nigeria ranking among the top ten countries reporting the highest number of cases. In 2024 alone, Nigeria recorded over 20,000 suspected measles cases, of which approximately 10,000 were confirmed, according to the US CDC.
Read also: FG, Gavi measles-rubella vaccination set for launch in October
Addressing journalists on Tuesday, Joseph Forbi, Epidemiologist at the US CDC Nigeria, said the burden of measles in Nigeria is very high, mostly in children that are unvaccinated or under-vaccinated. He added that there are more measles cases in the Northeast and the Northwest of the country, with nine of every ten children exposed to measles would become infected.
“The immunisation coverage in Nigeria is very low. Our best estimate shows that the coverage for measles 1 is just about 60%, and this is really, really low. Where we want to be, we want to be around 95%, but at this point, we are only at 60%. Currently, about 3 million children in this country have not had any contact with the measles vaccine. This means that they remain unprotected.
“We are targeting over 100 million children. The government cannot do this alone. We are working in collaboration with our partners like Gavi. We have been in alliance with them and we have supported a huge sum of money for the upcoming campaign. So far Gavi has put almost 33 million dollars to support this upcoming campaign. We also support GIS mapping”, he said.
Forbi explained that GIS mapping is a geographic information system used for micro-planning to enhance micro-planning so that the Centre is able to reach all the places where children are located in the country.
He said that the measles-rubella vaccine would be introduced in the country in October this year in the Northern part of the country and in the Southern part in January and February of 2026.
He added that the CDC had trained 1,475 health officers on guidelines on how to conduct measles outbreak response and root cause analysis, while also supporting eight designated laboratories in the country.
“In these laboratories we supply all the reagents for testing for measles in the entire country. We also train the laboratorians on how to conduct all the tests”, he said.
The Epidemiologist, however, urged the Nigerian Government to continue to prioritise measles elimination effort to ensure that we have resources for routine immunisation.
Read also: Experts want Nigeria to scale up childhood vaccination to prevent disease outbreaks
“The Government also has to continue to provide an enabling environment where children can be vaccinated. We know it is difficult during times of insecurity for our teams to go out and vaccinate children. So the government needs to create a secure environment for us to vaccinate children”, he noted.
Also speaking at the media roundtable, Patricia Tanifum, Programme Director of the CDC Nigeria Global Immunisation Division (GID), noted the severity of the disease and Nigeria’s alignment with global targets.
“Measles, which is a very rare infectious disease. And its complications is because of disability and death. Globally, there is an agenda to eliminate measles and rubella, two diseases that really go together. By the year 2030, Nigeria is also aligned to this agenda”, she said.
