Polio inoculation drive: Poor coordination bogging down performance, says DCO

Stern directives issued regarding upcoming drive

BAHAWALPUR: The Health Department has planned to hold a polio immunisation drive from February 15 to February 19, Health EDO Makhdoom Basharat Hashmi said at a meeting on Sunday. He said training workshops in this regard had begun.

EPI Focal Person Mufakhir Mian said they would target 839,169 children under the age of five years in Rahim Yar Khan district. He said 1,743 mobile teams, 223 teams at fixed points and 146 teams for transit points had been constituted for this drive.

DCO Muhammad Zafar Iqbal said it was unfortunate that the Health Department’s EPI Programme was not producing the results it had set out to achieve. “I blame poor coordination at several levels and feel that we need to ensure coordination across polio immunisation campaigns.”

The DCO said that eliminating poliomyelitis was a national responsibility. “It is a shame that Pakistan remains one of the few countries where children still contract this debilitating disease.”  He said the fact that Pakistan had been unable to eradicate the disease had hurt it in several ways.

Iqbal directed assistant commissioners to monitor all training workshops organised by the Health Department and told them to participate wholeheartedly in training workshops as well. “All departments must work together to ensure 100 per cent coverage in this polio immunisation drive,” he said. No negligence will be tolerated, he said. “And decisions taken at the top must translate into action at the lower tiers.”

The DCO said one of the ways to achieve the target of 100 per cent coverage was if all officials of various departments were given duties to perform in the upcoming polio drive.

He said the health district officer and all assistant commissioners must attend polio immunisation campaign meetings that will be held at 6:30am daily during the drive. He said their absence from the meeting would be marked as absence from service. “The same rules stand for late night meetings,” the DCO said.

Iqbal stressed the importance of setting up a control room to coordinate efforts at various levels. He also urged officials to launch an aggressive media and social media campaign to raise awareness and to disseminate information published as a part of the Health Department’s polio vaccination campaign.

He said that the Health Department will issue duty rosters for officials to respond to complaints at the union council, tehsil and district levels on priority. The DCO gave the Health EDO two months to ensure vaccination of all children in Rahim Yar Khan district.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 8^th,  2016.