Islamabad
The Federal Expanded Programme on Immunisation Monday signed with the World Bank, a financing grant agreement and project agreement of Multi Donor Trust Fund and National Immunisation Support Project (NISP) to address the longstanding issues of inefficiency and unsustainability caused by the fragmented financing structure of the programme in Pakistan.
Contrary to the fragmented approach of financing, NISP consolidates multiple donors and government sources of funding in the form of Multi Donors Trust Fund (MDTF) for co-financing. Speaking on the occasion, the national manager of EPI Dr. Saqlain Gilani, explained that that under this programme, the federal and provincial programmes will make adequate and sustainable financing available through the national and provincial recurrent budgets for procurement of the vaccines and delivery of immunisation services, respectively. "The provinces have given their consent for pool procurement of vaccines by the federal government on behalf of the provinces," he added.
The World Bank, in coordination with development partners, visited Pakistan from July 14-29 this year to conduct a Joint Supervision, Appraisal and Evaluation Mission (JSAEM) for implementation of NISP and to discuss the overall implementation status, institutional and financing arrangements for the project. The disbursement of funds will be done under two modes. The first mode is through Disbursement Linked Indicators (DLI) mechanism, under which funds would be disbursed to provinces on achievement of desirable results after third-party verification. The second mode will be through Technical Assistance, whereby funds shall be provided to EPI in the designated account for provinces and federal both for the procurement of cold chain, goods and consultations while third-party evaluation will be done for addressing bottlenecks in both the provincial and federal programmes.