Zambia Expanded Programme on Immunization

Zambia's national childhood vaccination program, launched in 1975 not long after the World Health Organization established the global Expanded Programme on Immunization, and followed by a dedicated Universal Child Immunization drive in 1987. The programme has relied on strategies including immunization on demand at health facilities, intensified outreach into underserved areas, periodic national immunization weeks and social mobilization campaigns to hold down dropout between vaccine doses, and it marked its 50th anniversary in 2025. In recent years Zambia's EPI has adopted digital reporting platforms that helped reach more than 165,000 previously unvaccinated children in a single year, cut reporting delays from days to hours, and achieved 97 percent coverage in a measles-rubella campaign, while also introducing the R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine into routine immunization for more than 500,000 children.