KARACHI: Having received encouraging results from a pilot project in Korangi, where it increased immunisation coverage to 54 per cent in six years, officials of the provincial health department with its partners announced on Tuesday that they would scale up the digital immunisation registry programme across Sindh.

Titled ‘Zindagi Mehfooz Digital Immunisation Registry in Sindh’, the programme was launched at a local hotel.

The registry developed by Interactive Research and Development (IRD), an international health delivery and research organisation, with the Indus Health Network (IHN) would help reduce child mortality from vaccine preventable diseases by enabling vaccinators to record routinely collected immunisation data on their mobile phones linked in real time to a web-based monitoring dashboard.

‘Paper-based systems make it difficult to track and monitor a child’s immunisation coverage’

The provincial scale-up is supported by WHO-Pakistan and Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation.

Speaking at the ceremony, Health Secretary Dr Fazlullah Pechuho admitted that there were gaps in government health mechanism. He said there were “quality issues” in data and that a government hospital in Badin had been given to the Indus Hospital (IH) team for better management.

According to him, the total number of “still missed children” [who fail to get anti-polio drops in campaigns] and refusals in Karachi was around 50,000.

“We believe that if community health workers and lady health workers have devices to track down and follow up cases, immunisation coverage would definitely improve in the province,” he said.

Health Minister Dr Sikandar Ali Mandhro said that absolute success could be achieved only if the government staff put their hearts and souls into their work, apart from making use of technological innovations.

“We will get 100 per cent success if we go into the field and seek people’s feedback on the services the government is providing them. It’s good to make use of technology but if we are led by conscience and love for children, our efforts will produce more durable results,” he said and thanked the IH and other partners for their support.

Dr Abdul Bari Khan, the chief executive officer of the IHN, shared some statistics on child mortality, highlighting the project’s significance. Of every 1,000 live births in Sindh, he pointed out, 82 children were estimated to die before their first birthday. Most of these deaths were due to vaccine preventable diseases.

“Factors contributing to this situation include sub-optimal immunisation coverage, overburdened immunisation staff, inadequate health infrastructure, lack of awareness and wrong perceptions regarding immunisation among parents and paper-based systems that make it difficult to track and monitor a child’s immunisation coverage,” he said.

Sharing details of the Zindagi Mehfooz project, Dr Subhash Chandir, the director of the Child Health and Vaccines Programme at the IRD, said that it aimed to change the landscape of child health by engaging parents for timely immunisation, systemising vaccinator’s job by creating centralised immunisation record, reducing time spent on paper-based reporting and creating more time and opportunities for vaccinators to immunise children.

“At the time of a child’s visit to the EPI centre, the vaccinator will enrol the child in the registry by assigning a unique identification in the form of a quick response code and submitting the data to the web dashboard in real time,” he said.

Highlighting other features of the application, he said the registry would also enable automated SMS reminders for parents about their child’s upcoming vaccination and provide a decision support system for routine and catch-up immunisation.

The project was initially piloted in Karachi in 2012, later in Shikarpur in 2015 and now had been extended to 1,600 basic health units across Sindh, he said.

Project director Extended Programme for Immunisation (EPI), Sindh, Dr Agha Mohammad Ashfaq informed the audience about the successes achieved so far and said that immunisation coverage had increased from 35pc to 45pc owing to better monitoring.

“Our target is to increase immunisation coverage by 80pc in five years,” he said.

The programme concluded with the distribution of mobile phones equipped with applications to vaccinators and shields to guests.

Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2017