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| July 12, 2005 | Tuesday | Jumadi-us-Sani 4, 1426 |
Low vaccine coverage survey planned
PESHAWAR, July 11: Donor organizations have planned to conduct a survey in the NWFP and Fata to ascertain the causes of the low coverage of vaccination for seven vaccine-preventable diseases. The Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), which was started in 1976 and became a regular department in 1996, is yet to deliver the desired results because of shortage of staff, administrative bottlenecks and lack of resources to meet the target.
“The overall coverage is stated to be above 80 per cent but it is always suspicious. EPI technicians send false reports about the coverage,” said an official of the UN agency.
He said that it had been decided in a meting of the donor organizations to conduct a survey at the health facilities and find out the reasons for the low coverage of vaccination.
About 1,100 EPI technicians in the NWFP and Fata are required to administer vaccines to 5.5million children below the age of five years at the fixed centres located at the health facilities. But with the passage of time, it was observed that the people were unwilling to bring their off-springs to the fixed centres for vaccination that had affected the vaccination campaign.
With a view to speeding up the coverage of vaccine the strategy was changed and the technicians were asked to carry out door-to-door visits in 2000.
The UN official said: “Now, the problem is that the vaccinators do not have vehicles to reach the inaccessible areas. There is also lack of awareness on the part of the parents regarding the importance of the vaccination.”
He said that the problem was more severe in Fata because there were no female Expanded Programme on Immunization technicians and when the male ones visited the houses in the tribal areas they were beaten up by the people.
He further said that the EPI technicians were required to travel on foot and reach inaccessible areas, which was not an easy task, and added that “absenteeism on the part of EPI staffers is also a big problem hindering our efforts”.
Under such circumstances, the WHO was extremely concerned about the vaccination coverage of polio, which is also part of the EPI.
To tackle the problem, the WHO launched Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI) in 1994 to run special immunization campaigns and supplement the Expanded Programme on Immunization.
Till 2001 there were five National Immunization Days (NIDs) that was increased to eight in 2002, while the fixed centres are used as backup. On a single campaign, the donor agencies spent an amount of Rs35million by hiring the services of 16,000 teams or 32,000 volunteers who vaccinated children for three days on every NID, while a fourth day has been reserved for special immunization activities to vaccinate those children who could not be vaccinated during the first three days.
An official said that EPI technicians were paid Rs100 per day as an incentive during NIDs apart from their salaries but they were reluctant to focus on strengthening of the EPI.
For polio, there is a strict monitoring system during the NIDs and its coverage had increased a great deal.
He hoped that the Frontier province would become polio-free by the end of this year. However, he said that for polio eradication the number had to remain zero for three consecutive years.
To achieve that there is an urgent need to mobilize the technicians to enhance EPI coverage, he added.
“Some of the EPI centres do not have any technicians at all, while the others have got the services of three or more,” he said, and added that political interference in the transfers and postings of Expanded Programme on Immunization technicians should be done away with.
The executive district officers, health, have no power to transfer technicians and only politicians can call the shots, which has an adverse effect on the EPI campaign.
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