Sierra Leone will conduct first round 2013 Maternal and Child Health Week (MCHW) Campaign from 24-28 January 2013. Preparations for the campaign are underway. Trainings/orientations were done for Civil Soci-ety Organizations (CSOs), Independent Monitors (IM), National Super-visors, Zonal and District Teams. The media have also been briefed for awareness raising and social mobilizations activities including street to street announcements are ongoing. Trainings of vaccinators/distributors commenced on 22 and will end 23 January in all the districts.

The CSOs will support and monitor the implementation process and the IM will monitor the quality of the campaign.

An integrated low cost, high impact lifesaving interventions will be deliv-ered to an estimated 1.4 million children less than 5 years and about 300,000 pregnant women. The services will include administration of Oral Polio Vac-cine, defaulter tracing of children less than one year, Vitamin A supplementa-tion, Albendazole administration and counseling and testing of pregnant women to help reduce mother to child transmission of HIV/AIDS.

The house to house strategy will be mainly used by vaccinators/distributors to reach the targeted beneficiaries.

MCHW is conducted twice annually (May & November) in Sierra Leone to deliver integrated maternal and child health interventions. The November 2012 MCHW was postponed to January 2013 due to national events.
WHO, UNICEF, Hellen Keller International and other partners are supporting the Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS) in the planning, coordina-tion and implementation of the campaign. Vaccines, funds for implemen-tation and other necessary logistics have been made available to MoHS and have been deployed to the districts in readiness for the activities.