Baby Vaccination Tracker

Written by Cynthia Obinatu, community and editorial lead. Built from the schedule Nigeria reports to the World Health Organization, and checked against guidance from the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children's Fund and the National Health Service. Not yet reviewed by a clinician. Educational, not medical advice.

What is the full immunisation schedule for a child in Nigeria, by age?

The current schedule is nine visits, from birth to nine years, and the table lists the vaccines given at each age. It is the routine schedule Nigeria reports to the World Health Organization. Your health centre works from the same one. The vaccines are free at government primary health centres. Nine visits carry a child from birth to nine years, and seven of them happen before the first birthday.

Pentavalent is one injection carrying five vaccines: diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenzae type b. PCV protects against the pneumococcus, the commonest cause of bacterial pneumonia in small children. Counting the combinations separately is why the same schedule is sometimes described as twelve vaccines and sometimes as nine visits. It is the same schedule.

Is this the latest immunisation schedule, and what about 2026?

Yes, this is the current one. It is the schedule Nigeria reports to the World Health Organization, and the most recent record is the 2025 one. Your clinic is running that one now. There is no separate 2026 schedule waiting to be published. Searching for the year is a reasonable instinct, because charts on clinic walls do go out of date, but the schedule changes when a vaccine is added.

The recent changes are HPV, the malaria vaccine and the combined measles-rubella vaccine, all covered below. If a third arrives, the table above changes and the date on this page changes with it.

What are the current immunisation programmes in Nigeria?

There are three, and people often mean different ones by the same phrase.

Routine immunisation is the nine visits in the table above, given free at government primary health centres from birth through to the HPV dose for girls at nine. This is the one most people mean.

Maternal immunisation is tetanus-containing vaccine for women during pregnancy, usually through antenatal care, and the World Health Organization says immunising women during pregnancy prevents tetanus in newborns. Vitamin A supplementation for children at 6 and 12 months sits in the routine schedule above.

Campaigns are the third. Nigeria runs mass rounds outside the routine schedule, and the most recent was the integrated measles-rubella and polio campaign that began in October 2025. It reached children aged 9 months to 14 years for measles-rubella and children under five for polio. A campaign dose adds to the routine doses on the card and does not replace them, so your child still needs every routine visit.

How many injections will a 2 month old baby get?

Nigeria's schedule is counted in weeks for the first few months, so a baby around two months old is due the 6-week visit or the 10-week one depending on the exact date. The 6-week visit is three injections and two doses by mouth. The 10-week visit is two injections and two by mouth.

Three injections in one sitting sounds like a lot, and most mothers find that visit the hardest one. Nurses usually give them in the thighs, one after the other, and it is over in under a minute. Feeding immediately afterwards settles most babies faster than anything else.

What are the new vaccines in the immunisation schedule?

Three vaccines have arrived or changed in the last few years. An older chart on a clinic wall may not match what your baby is offered.

HPV came first. Nigeria launched the single-dose HPV vaccine in October 2023, starting with a campaign for girls aged 9 to 14 and then moving it into routine immunisation at health facilities. It protects against the human papillomavirus that causes most cervical cancer, and it is given years before anyone is exposed.

The malaria vaccine followed. Nigeria began the R21 malaria vaccine in December 2024 in Kebbi and Bayelsa states, with four doses from 5 months of age and a booster at 15 months. It is rolling out state by state, so ask your clinic whether it is available where you live.

Measles-rubella is the newest. The October 2025 campaign was meant to introduce a combined measles-rubella vaccine to replace the measles-only vaccine, with the southern states planned for early 2026. Rubella matters most for who the child meets later, because rubella caught in early pregnancy can seriously damage a developing baby. Clinics are moving to the combined vaccine at different speeds, so your card may still say measles alone.

What happens if you miss a visit

You catch up, and you do not start again. This is the single most useful thing to know, because the fear of having ruined it keeps people away. A child who is behind is still offered the remaining doses on a catch-up plan, and the protection still builds. Take the card to the clinic and ask, even if the gap is a year.

Missing a date is ordinary here. You run short of fuel, the baby is sick for a week, you move house, or the clinic is out of stock. None of that makes your child unvaccinated. It makes them due.

Keep the clinic card, and keep a copy

The paper card the clinic gives you is the record that counts. It is asked for at school registration, it is asked for at travel, and it is the only proof of what has already been given. Cards get wet, get lost in a move, and fade. Photograph both sides after every visit and keep it in your phone.

Yellow fever has its own document. The yellow card, the International Certificate of Vaccination, is a separate booklet from the child's immunisation card and is what border officials ask for. If you expect to travel, ask the clinic for it at the 9-month visit rather than chasing it years later.

How this tracker works

The tracker above holds the nine visits. Enter a date of birth and each one shows the date it falls due, so you are working from a date rather than counting weeks in your head. Ticking a visit saves on this device, and nothing is sent anywhere.

This tracker is a reminder. Schedules are revised, stock runs short, a state may run a campaign that adds something, and a doctor may vary the plan for a particular child. Your clinic card is the truth. If the two disagree, the card wins and this page is wrong.

What your dates mean, and what they do not

Each date is the day a visit becomes due. Clinics run immunisation on set days of the week, so the realistic plan is the next immunisation day at your centre on or after the date shown. Arriving a few days later changes nothing.

The early dates are counted in weeks from birth and the later ones in months. So 14 weeks and 6 months look closer together on the calendar than the labels suggest. A baby born early is scheduled from the actual birth date. Do not adjust for the due date yourself. Ask the clinic if you are unsure.

The 6-month visit tends to land in the same few weeks as first foods, so it is worth reading our guide to starting solids around the same time. If you are still in the early weeks, omugwo covers the support side of that period.

Common questions

Where this comes from

• Nigeria's reported national immunisation schedule. World Health Organization.
• Immunization coverage: what routine schedules protect against and why timing matters. World Health Organization.
• Measles and the case for two doses. World Health Organization.
• Health and HIV in Nigeria. United Nations Children's Fund.
• Vaccinations and when to have them. National Health Service.
• Nigeria to vaccinate 7.7 million girls against leading cause of cervical cancer. World Health Organization.
• Nigeria introduces the R21 vaccine in a pivotal move for malaria control. World Health Organization.
• Nigeria intensifies fight against vaccine-preventable diseases with nationwide measles-rubella and polio campaign. World Health Organization.
• Nigeria launches large scale vaccination campaign to protect 106 million children against measles, rubella and polio. Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
• Tetanus. World Health Organization.

The schedule above is the one Nigeria reports to the World Health Organization. We would rather cite that record than a chart of unknown date, and we say plainly that this page has not yet been reviewed by a clinician. Read it alongside our medical policy, and treat your clinic card as the truth.