Oben Besong

Dr. Oben Besong is a pharmacist trained at the FMPS, University of Douala, Cameroon and graduated in 2017. Since March 2021, she has been serving as the Coordinator for the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) for the Southwest Region of Cameroon. In this role, she is responsible for coordinating capacity building, vaccination, disease surveillance, cold chain management, and monitoring and evaluation of EPI activities in the region. She has collaborated with international organizations such as the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) to reach thousands of zero dose children in insecure and hard-to-reach communities with life-saving vaccines, and improve the uptake of under-utilized vaccines (HPV, COVID-19) in the face of high rates of vaccine hesitancy. Her approach is community-centered, and she has actively used various communication and leadership techniques such as storytelling, focused group discussions, and community engagement meetings to improve vaccine demand in challenging communities. Dr. Besong is also involved in the introduction of new vaccines; Covid-19, HPV in boys, Rotavac, IPV2 and the anti-malarial RTS,S vaccine). Besides her role in immunization, she is a Frontline Field Epidemiologist actively involved in responding to outbreaks (yellow fever, cholera, measles, polio, COVID-19).