Monitoring of polio workers’ training urged

Teams fluent in local languages to vaccinate kids of priority communities

LAHORE:

Punjab polio programme head Khizer Afzaal Chaudhary urged the district health authorities on Thursday to take full ownership of the campaigns for the eradication of the disease and ensure the success of an upcoming national inoculation drive.

He was talking to the chief executive officers (CEOs) and district health officers (DHOs) of all districts of Punjab during a meeting held to review preparations regarding the national polio eradication campaign.

He urged the officials to devise a monitoring plan for the ongoing trainings and ensure that their quality was up to the mark. Teams fluent in local languages needed to be deployed in priority community areas to ensure that there was no communication barrier, he stressed.

Chaudhary urged the district health administrations to ensure data quality so that issues could be identified and rectified timely.

He called on the district authorities to ensure that workers from the same area were selected for polio campaigns. “Districts need to pay full attention to vaccination of children during the SIAs (supplementary immunisation activities). Therefore, a monitoring plan needs to be devised with full participation from high-ups,” he said.

The provincial polio programme head urged the CEOs and DHOs to ensure that polio vaccine was used judiciously. “Districts need to develop an analysis of the vaccine usage with trends so that there is a permanent check on the vaccine leftovers,” he underlined.

He instructed the district health administrations to ensure safety and well-being of polio workers.

He said the National Emergency Operations Centre had launched an initiative to provide monetary relief to polio workers. "The assistance provided to the districts needs to be distributed among the workers on time,” he said.

He also stressed the importance of providing security to polio workers.

Punjab has been free of polio cases since October 2020, but environmental samples have tested positive after May 2021 in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Bahawalpur and Sialkot.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 6^th, 2023.