RAWALPINDI Head of the Punjab Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) Khizer Afzaal has called upon district health authorities to come up with a comprehensive plan to cover micro plan and data quality gaps so that educative measures can be taken before the next national polio immunization drive to be started on November 27.
Chairing a post-campaign review meeting of the District Health Management Teams(DHMTs) including the Chief Executive Officers(CEO) of 36 districts of Punjab via video link, the EOC head highlighted the need to focus on updating the micro plans in the aftermath of the return of Afghan refugees to their homes.
‘To avoid the incidence of missed children, Afghan population settlements must be updated in micro plans and the district CEO needs to ensure that micro plans are prepared and submitted timely’, the EOC emphasized. He directed the district administrations to encourage polio teams to report accurate data so that data misreporting was discouraged.
Khizer Afzaal also highlighted the risk o
f the virus spreading in megacities and suggested that the next NID be held in the context of the virus spread.
‘To stop virus spread and reduce immunity gaps, districts needed to focus on coverage of all children by reducing the percentage of missed children’.
The EOC head laid special focus on controlling vaccine wastage and directed the district authorities to come up with data on vaccine usage in the last three rounds.
He specifically directed the districts to lay special emphasis on the pre-campaign phase on union councils which were frequently showing unsatisfactory results in micro plan assessments and Lot Quality Assurance Sampling.
In his observations, Khizer stressed the DHMTs to ensure that Union Council Medical Officers and Area Incharges were completing walk-throughs with the teams in their respective areas ahead of the campaign.
Concluding his remarks, the EOC head reiterated that Punjab has been polio-free for the last three years, and ‘Credit goes to us but if the status changes discredit
will also rest with us’, the EOC head cautioned.