Minister for National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination Saira Afzal Tarar Wednesday said that the provincial governments were fully committed and prepared to conduct the quality measles campaigns.
The government of Pakistan appreciated the tremendous partnership with Gavi and its continuous support to the country, she said while talking with Dr Seth Berkley, the CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance in Abu Dhabi.
During meeting, they discussed the strengthening of immunization of Pakistani Children with the support of GAVI, says a fax message received here.
She said that Pakistan had most recently applied for the Gavi support for
Measles campaigns, as the country planed to conduct a nationwide campaign in
March–April 2018 for preventing the risk of measles outbreak and to curtail the
risk of morbidity and mortality of children due to this serious disease.
Seeing the criticality of the programme need, the government
of Pakistan has forwarded a request to GAVI to intervene for supporting the
urgent need of the country.
The minister said that the EPI programme was building upon the lessons learnt from
the previous campaign as well as the mop-ups which had been recently completed
by the provinces, based on which a comprehensive micro planning and timelines had
been developed in consensus with the provinces.
In this regard a dedicated session was held during the last Joint Supervision,
Appraisal and Evaluation Mission where it was agreed to conduct measles campaigns
in March-April 2018 in the view of measles risk assessment by WHO and
epidemiological analysis by the experts.
The government of Pakistan is grateful to Gavi as the additional support will help the
programme in targeting the poorly and inadequately immunized strata of the urban
slums where the largest number of under and un-immunized children reside in Pakistan.
She said that further with the Support of Gavi Cold Chain Equipment Optimization Platform the
Programme could be expanding its cold chain points which would improve the
overall vaccine and logistics management system and boost the service
delivery.
She said the government of Pakistan particularly appreciated Gavi “One Technical Assistance
Plan” initiative which had helped the country in optimizing the donor funds, being
utilized through the development partners, for best value of money without
duplication of efforts and resources.
The pooled funding under Multi Donor Trust fund mechanism along with the integrated
Performance framework in National Immunization Support Project (NISP) has
further synergized the support in the technical assistance in priority areas.
She said EPI programme continued to work in synergy with Polio Eradication initiative.
A working group on synergy has been constituted. At Federal level an EPI officer has been
deputed as the member in EOC for better coordination for sharing of the
zero-dose and defaulters data, based on which Federal EPI is regularly
providing feedback to the Provincial Programmes for improving the service
delivery efforts and covering the un-immunized population.

Source: APP