“STOP Pneumonia”: A successful advocacy campaign for preventing and protecting Indonesia’s children from pneumonia

The Government of Indonesia (GOI) has introduced pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCV) as a pilot in October 2017 in five districts of Nusa Tenggara Barat (NTB) (Lombok Barat, Lombok Timur, Lombok Utara, Lombok Tengah, and Mataram) and three districts of Bangka Belitung province (Pangkalpinang, Bangka and Bangka Tengah). With a high burden of childhood pneumonia, this pilot phase of PCV rollout was expanded in 2019 to more districts. However, Indonesia lacked a nationwide scale-up vaccination program where PCV is scheduled into the routine childhood immunization program. Including PCV in routine child immunization program is a critical step to save more child lives and to meet the child mortality target for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Collaborative efforts have been made since 2017 at the district, national and global level by different stakeholders to make this happen.