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In a bid to address the high burden of vaccine-preventable disease and low immunisation coverage in Africa, Ministers of health and finance from several African countries conveyed at the maiden Ministerial Conference on Immunisation at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on the 25th of February 2016 to pledge political commitments to reduce the prevalence and deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases to the barest minimum. The fulfilment of this pledge across Africa would require the design of contextually tailored sustainable plans to finance the procurement of vaccines and the running of apt immunisation programs. A robust understanding of the trend of immunisation financing in Africa will support the development of suitable national immunization financing plans, guide policy makers to develop immunisation financing strategies focused on domestic resources but factor in donor support; and provide insights for the rejuvenation and expansion of immunisation programs. Our study’s objective is to estimate the minimum fraction of a country’s health budget that should be invested in the national immunisation programme to achieve a national immunisation coverage of 80% or greater depending on the context with and without donors’ support.

The study results did not find any evidence to indicate that health expenditure on immunisation (as a proportion of total health expenditure) could be a strong predictor of immunisation coverage. However, we observed an association between total health expenditure (as a % of the GDP) and immunisation coverage, for BCG (p=0.047) and DPT3 (p=0.013) vaccines. Therefore, health expenditure as a percentage of …