One year ago this month, COVID-19 was officially declared a global pandemic. Coronavirus has dramatically shifted the way the world views public health, with issues like vaccine hesitancy and the equitable allocation of medical supplies coming to the forefront. But the pandemic has also had a significant impact on planned health campaigns across other disease domains.
Over the past year, Linksbridge has monitored this impact through the COVID-19 Campaign Impact Tracker, which records COVID-19’s impact on cholera, lymphatic filariasis, malaria, measles, meningitis, onchocerciasis, polio, schistosomiasis, STH, tetanus, typhoid, and yellow fever campaigns, including delays, early terminations, and more. Developed with data captured through media monitoring and provided by partners (including Gavi, Outbreak Response Task Team, UNICEF, and WHO), the campaign calendar tracks the status of completed, delayed, and rescheduled campaigns by disease. At last count, 262 out of 554 health campaigns had been delayed due to COVID.
View the COVID-19 Campaign Impact Tracker here.
In addition to the tracker, Linksbridge maintains the Global Campaigns Overview, which provides the number of planned campaigns by intervention and by month (when possible) by country. Additional details on targeted group and co-delivered services can be found in the database summary (depending on the data source). The Overview reflects planned campaigns as far in advance as 2025, and is searchable by year, disease, region and country.
The cross-cutting campaign calendar was initially created to provide transparency across disease verticals and geographies around upcoming campaign events. This included visibility into what campaigns are planned, their resource and input requirements, and their performance. Since its inception, the calendar has widened in scope to address partner requests for information on target population, subnational geographies, and co-delivery. These partners include global collaborators such as Alliance for Malaria Prevention, END Fund, Gavi, Global Fund, UNICEF, WHO, etc., as well as country-level program managers and ministries of health.
The findings from these two tools were summarized earlier this year in Linksbridge’s first-ever State of Health Delivery Campaigns report. The resource showcases how the cross-cutting campaign calendar and resource repository may serve as a resource for campaign planners and managers. The report analyzes the delays to date, details the fallout of vaccine coverage dropping worldwide, and takes an in-depth look at vaccine target age.
As the second year of the pandemic begins, health campaigns and interventions are restarting across the globe. While it is still unknown how long it will take to achieve pre-pandemic coverage levels, news of restarted or newly scheduled campaigns will continue to be recorded and included in the tracker.