High child mortality linked to inadequate immunisation

Low coverage of routine EPI major factor for unprotected children.

ISLAMABAD:

Pakistan is among the top 10 countries where children lose their lives to vaccine-preventable diseases, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund’s UNICEF fact sheet.

“One out of five children is still unprotected against vaccine-preventable diseases and over 70% of these live in Afghanistan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and South Africa,” according to the fact sheet.

Talking to The Express Tribune, Dr Rana Muhammad Safdar, national programme manager for the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI), said in Pakistan, 46% children out of 6.1 million under the age of one year, are not fully immunised against vaccine-preventable diseases due to the low coverage of routine immunisation. “There is a need to increase the percentage of fully immunised children from 75 to 90 per cent by 2015 by increasing routine immunisation coverage from 54 to 80 per cent across the nation.” It is estimated that out of 0.43 million children under the age of five in Pakistan, 88,000 die every year from vaccine-preventable diseases. This is a major reason behind the high infant mortality rate due to which Pakistan is lagging behind in achieving Millennium Development Goals 2015, he added.



Dr Safdar said that other challenge that Pakistan was facing included an inadequate number of fixed sites for vaccinating children and shortage of vaccinators, At present, there are only 9,000 vaccinators in the country. The distribution of vaccinators at the union council level, field monitoring and supervision, strategic, operational planning and coordination are in need of improvement while limited community engagement and demand creation compound the problem.

“Some parents are still not making efforts to vaccinate their children under the EPI, either because they’re unaware of its importance or because they are deprived of this facility in nearby healthcare centres,” he said. “However, the government will be launching a new immunisation policy in October-November 2013 and will also finalise a five-year strategic plan for 2014-2018 by December this year to address these issues.”



EPI is facing a shortage of $15 million to carry out an anti-measles campaign across the country. “We’ve to carry out an anti-measles campaign before the next spring season to save lives of millions of  children and for that we have requested the Finance Division for financial assistance.”

Published in The Express Tribune, October 2^nd, 2013.