October 2022 — Since March 2021, UNICEF has transported millions of COVID-19 vaccines into Kenya and supported the Ministry of Health (MoH) to ensure these vaccines are freely accessible to the eligible population. However, the MoH continued to record low uptake of COVID-19 vaccination. A John Hopkins COVID-19​ Knowledge, Attitudes and Practice (KAP) study carried out in September 2021 revealed that the misinformation on COVID-19 and the inconvenience of vaccination service were critical structural barriers. In this regard, UNICEF Kenya launched a vaccination drive in partnership with the Inter-Religious Council of Kenya (IRCK) to mobilize religious leaders for COVID-19 vaccination uptake in places of worship in December 2021. As a follow-up, a social mobilization campaign was launched in July 2022 to further influence behavior change among congregants and the community.

On 8 December 2021, together with UNICEF and the MoH, IRCK signed a commitment to have places of worship used as vaccination centers to provide more convenient vaccination services and organized a national advocacy event in which the MoH and top religious leaders called on everyone to get vaccinated and asked religious leaders to offer their places of worship as vaccination centers. Following this advocacy event, IRCK started the vaccination process across 30 Counties in Kenya. Over 600 places of worship were identified by religious leaders to be used as vaccination centers, and congregations could get vaccinated immediately after listening to a sermon on the subject. To address fears and misinformation, trusted religious leaders worked as role models by taking the vaccine themselves and providing reliable information to people. The involvement of religious leaders in the vaccination process led to an increase in COVID-19 vaccine coverage, with approximately 2,510,412 people receiving the COVID-19 jab between December 2021 and March 2022.

To scale up the COVID-19 vaccination efforts, IRCK with the support of UNICEF and in collaboration with the MoH, launched a social mobilization campaign for COVID-19 vaccination uptake in places of worship in 24 target Counties from July to August 2022. The campaign aimed to influence the public’s mindset and behaviors toward vaccination, in turn improving uptake in the least performing Counties. To support religious leaders in promoting COVID-19 vaccination with theologically-informed COVID-19 messages, IRCK printed and distributed booklets debunking myths and misconceptions about COVID-19 vaccines. IRCK also supported trust-building campaigns by identifying faith leaders to participate in radio talk shows on national and local radio stations, so that they could interact with the audience delivering key messages, debunking myths and misconceptions and promoting vaccination in places of worship. Further to this, IRCK leveraged social media platforms to advocate and promote COVID-19 vaccination across the country. During the follow-up campaign between 25 July and 17 August 2022, 295,843 people were vaccinated through the efforts of religious leaders.