Fight pneumonia: For rural areas, vaccine to come after winter ends

Vaccination in urban areas to start next month.

ISLAMABAD:

The Expanded Programme of Immunisation (EPI) has for the second time missed the deadline to fulfil its international commitment to introduce free-of-charge anti-pneumonia vaccine in Islamabad.

“All-out efforts were made to launch anti-pneumonia vaccine this winter to vaccinate children under the age of five, but they failed due to the negligence of Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) officials who did not train their vaccinators on schedule,” said an EPI official who wished not to be named.

The official said that it is a known fact that mostly children who suffer from pneumonia belong to rural areas and their parents cannot afford to buy the vaccine as a single shot costs Rs4,200. Under the programme, thousands of vaccination shots are to be made available free of charge.

The Capital Development Authority (CDA) has trained its vaccinators and hopefully the anti-pneumonia vaccine will be made available at urban EPI centres some time next month, he added.

CDA Health Services Director Hassan Urooj said they have requested EPI to release the vaccines.

The anti-pneumonia vaccine was supposed to be made available in November. The deadline was later extended to January 1 due to “various reasons”, according to officials.

ICT Deputy Commissioner (DC) Amir Ali Ahmed explained that the vaccinators’ training was underway, which would be completed by the end of February.



The DC categorically denied that ICT had missed any deadline. He said ICT was following its own schedule for introducing the vaccine, because their vaccinators were caught up in the polio campaigns. But when asked about the delay, he could not explain why it would now take an additional month to train them, considering the polio drive for January 14 was called off. “We are looking forward to introducing the anti-pneumonia vaccine at all EPI centres in rural areas by March 1,” he said.

“We are looking forward to introducing the anti-pneumonia vaccine at all EPI centres in rural areas by March 1,” he said.

Last year in October, the pneumococcal vaccine was included in the EPI programme with the support of the World Health Organisation, the Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunisation (GAVI) and UNICEF. This made Pakistan, the first country in South Asian region to have a free pneumococcal immunisation programme.

GAVI has donated $680 million, and the government has donated Rs17 million to provide the vaccine till 2015.

During first phase the vaccine was supposed to be introduced in Islamabad and Punjab. However, while Punjab succeeded in offering the free vaccine last October, it is not available to children in the federal capital.

According to UNICEF, more than 352,000 children die annually before reaching their fifth birthday in Pakistan and nearly one in five of these deaths are due to pneumonia.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 29^th, 2013.