Lahore – Punjab Emergency Operations Centre Coordinator and head of the polio programme in Punjab Mr Khizer Afzaal has called for training needs assessment of district health officials, as province plans to roll out a special polio campaign in six districts from Monday. He was chairing a review and readiness meeting on Friday with districts where a polio eradication campaign was concluded recently. District officials where a new polio campaign is starting from Monday also participated in the meeting via video link.
Showing concern about sub-optimal performance of Deputy District Health Officers, he disclosed that a complete report of their performance in polio campaigns will be submitted to the chief secretary. to ascertain knowledge of Deputy District Health Officers and plan capacity building sessions with all the DDHOs.
“If DDHOs performance is below par, the results in polio campaigns will also be sub-optimal. They need to go to field to check microplans and meet with their field teams”, Mr Afzaal stressed. Presiding over the meeting Mr Khizer Afzaal announced that a special polio eradication campaign has been planned in six districts keeping in view polio virus circulation.
Districts include Lahore, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Lodhran, Bahawalpur and Muzaffargarh, he said.
During the meeting, the data teams briefed the EOC Coordinator about results of the June SNIDs which was held in 9 districts including Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan, Faisalabad, Okara, Mianwali, Bahawalpur, Muzaffargarh and Rahim Yar Khan.
The EOC coordinator was also briefed about and environmental sample results of June, data quality issues, missed and zero doze children coverage as well as vaccine wastage rates.
Mr Afzaal called upon districts to use the oral polio vaccine with utmost care, minimizing the wastage to permissible limits but at the same ensuring that children were not under-immunized.
He directed the districts who were lagging in zero doze children data entry to ensure that complete data was entered in the application on time.
Mr Afzaal reiterated the desire to engage and retain government accountable officers in polio teams.
Mr Afzaal highlighted the need to finalize microplans on time and called for ensuring their quality.
The EOC coordinator directed the district authorities to take strict action against officials not meeting the pre-campaign indicators especially in union councils which are constantly being flagged as red.
More than 32,000 polio workers will participate in the campaign starting from Monday to vaccinate over 5 million children.
The campaign will continue for 7 days in Lahore and Rawalpindi. Whereas in other districts the campaign will last 5 days.
Punjab Emergency Operations Centre has deployed experts in priority union councils to implement the campaign.
