A vaccination campaign in Bhopal, India (archive; not the campaign described in this report).
A vaccination campaign in Bhopal, India (archive; not the campaign described in this report). Illustrative archive image; not a photograph of the reported 2026 event. Image: Suyash Dwivedi / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized and converted to JPEG; thumbnails may be cropped by the page layout.

A multinational effort to recover missed childhood vaccinations delivered more than 100 million doses to an estimated 18.3 million children across 36 countries, WHO, UNICEF and Gavi reported on 24 April. The figures cover children reached between 2023 and 2025 through the Big Catch-Up initiative.

Among those reached were an estimated 12.3 million children who had previously received no vaccines. Programme implementation ended on 31 March 2026, while final reporting remained under way. The agencies said the initiative was on course to reach its overall target of at least 21 million children; that target was not yet a final verified total. The announcement highlighted both the value of catch-up campaigns and the need for dependable routine services so that new gaps do not emerge.