Anti-polio drive: Monitoring to be strengthened

Minister for National Health Services visits vaccine storages.

ISLAMABAD: Technology is being used to monitor and get real-time information during the anti-polio campaign and to take action.

This was revealed on Wednesday during a briefing given to Minister for National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination Saira Afzal Tarar.

The minister was told that the focus of the programme was shifted from children covered during the anti-polio drive to those missed. Special efforts were being made to cover consistently missed children.

According to a press release, Prime Minister’s Focal Person for Polio Eradication Ayesha Raza Farooq told in the meeting that to enhance focus on missed children, technology was being used to improve mapping and to identify the areas and households missed.

During the meeting, it was decided that the criteria for declaring a union council at high-risk for polio should be changed. The criteria has been expanded with additional indicators and accordingly, the number of high-risk union councils stands at 551.

Earlier, Tarar visited the vaccine stores at the National Institute of Health to review the vaccine management system and observe the stocking and storage of vaccines in the federal EPI stores in Chak Shahzad.

The minister inspected the cold rooms where vaccines provided under the Expanded Programme on Immunisation are stored before being supplied to the provinces.

She was then briefed by the USAID Deliver Project team on the vaccine logistics and management system and the measures in place to improve vaccine storage and bring it in sync with internationally-accepted standard operating procedures and best practices.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2015.