We use cash transfers to increase immunization rates in Nigeria

Many mothers in North West Nigeria live on less than $2 a day and cannot visit the clinic for various reasons. They face challenges such as affording the transportation cost to the clinic, associated loss in earnings from small-scale trading or farming, receiving permission from their partners, fear of vaccination side effects, cultural barriers to vaccination, or often a combination of these factors. We provide cash transfers to caregivers who vaccinate their infants after verifying that their infant has gotten the latest vaccinations. The five transfers given during five visits to the clinic in the first year of the infant’s life totals ~USD $11, enough to cover transport, medicine, and food for their families.

Poor mothers in rural West Africa are stuck in a cycle of poverty. Living at the bottom of the economic ladder forces them to make choices between their survival today and a better future for them and their children tomorrow. Your donation and cash transfer give them a chance to escape from this vicious cycle: they do not have to worry about missing work and can afford transport to access health clinics. Put simply, they no longer have to choose between food today or health tomorrow. The impact is profound: children are protected against deadly diseases. An independent Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) was carried out between 2017 - 2020 to evaluate the impact of our program.

A Randomized Controlled Trial or RCT is a study in which people are allocated at random (by chance alone) to receive an intervention so that the results can be compared with a control group who did not receive the intervention. This matters because the impact of a program is often a complex interaction of circumstances and effects with unknown externalities. An RCT can help dissociate these interactions to help establish a causal effect of an intervention. It helps organizations assess what their work actually does and does not do.

New Incentives focuses on using evidence-based methods to make programmatic decisions and to do the most good possible. Some examples of how we do this: we designed our program to use Conditional Cash Transfers, an approach that has been proven to be effective in changing health behaviors; we focus on immunizations and operate in North West Nigeria, where only around 25% of infants are fully immunized thus leading to devastating disease outbreaks; and we take operational decisions internally based on data to increase program effectiveness.

Conditional cash transfers are different from microloans. Conditional cash transfers are not loans, meaning the recipient does not have to repay the transfer amount and is not subject to a cycle of debt.

New Incentives operates where it can have the biggest impact: rural Nigeria. The West African country is home to just 3% of the world’s population, yet accounts for 13% of the world’s mortality of children under five, the second highest rate in the world.

Yes. Donations to New Incentives made in the USA are tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Contact us if you'd like to donate from outside the US.

Fraud mitigation and preventing potential leakage of funds is one of our core responsibilities. We have comprehensive procedures and systems to prevent and detect fraud. We carry out post-transfer reviews of each disbursement, regularly perform unannounced program audits, and have robust data analytics that we continuously iterate based on lessons learned. We follow rigorous standards for recruiting, training, and managing our personnel.

New Incentives encourages timely vaccination recordkeeping and reporting, review of vaccine stock to help prevent vaccine stockouts, and provides support to government stakeholders to submit vaccine utilization reports. To assess vaccine quality, we work with clinic staff to review vaccine vial monitors (VVMs), vaccine expiry dates, and call Local Cold Chain Officers (LCCOs) and State Cold Chain Officers (SCCOs) every other week to verify the stock and validity of vaccine supply. A documented review of availability of adequate stock is completed before each immunization day. Issues are resolved prior to the start of the session when escalated. Stockouts that occur during the session are also reported and efforts are made to resolve before the next session. Our teams work with LCCOs and SCCOs to assess availability of adequate vaccines in stock for the next two weeks.

New Incentives actively participates at the State Emergency Routine Immunization Coordination Centre (SERICC) and has provided financial and technical supports such ass: Training of LGA Routine Immunization Officers, printing of data tools and materials for outreach with traditional leaders, support for SERICC infrastructure, collaboration with private clinics on Routine Immunizations, participation in supportive supervision, and quarterly earmarked financial support to SERICC on their choice of activities that strengthen routine immunization.