3 million Nigerian children begin their vaccination journey every year. Many don’t finish it. Most of the dropouts happens at the 9-month mark, right when the measles vaccine is due.

In this episode of The Norms Lab Podcast, Anjola Ayodele sits with public health researchers Ernest Ezeogu and Mary Kuforiji to explore why children and crucially, what’s already working to change it. 

This isn’t a conversation about mothers who don’t care. It’s about a mother who trekked kilometres under the sun, only to be told the vaccine was out of stock. A mother who had to lie to her husband to vaccinate her own child. And a community where husbands started riding their wives to the clinic and everything changed.

 In this episode, we explore:

• Why the 6-month gap between the 14-week and 9-month vaccines is where children fall through the cracks

• How caregiving norms, household authority, and “let peace reign” culture shape who gets vaccinated

• What happened when vaccines were brought to places of worship

• How mothers who served as peer researchers became change-makers

Immunization dropout is not a parenting failure. It’s a systems and norms challenge, and the people closest to the problem are already designing the solutions.

ttps://youtu.be/40m8rxltJAI