EPI officials claim 103pc coverage in last polio campaign

Karachi
Despite several setbacks including mismanagement and inadequate security during the last polio campaign held in December 2014, the Expanded Program on Immunisation (EPI) in Sindh on Friday termed its National Immunisation Days (NIDs) drive a success by claiming to have achieved 103 percent coverage across the province.
Two police officials had been killed, one in the district West and the other in district Central, while the campaign could not begin on time in many areas of the city including Baldia, Ittehad Town, Manghopir, Gadap, Malir, Sohrab Goth and Landhi.
On the other hand, residents in Defence, Clifton, Gulshan-e-Iqbal and several blocks of Gulistan-e-Jauhar claimed that polio workers never visited their homes during the last vaccination campaign.
The complaint was most prevalent among residents of apartment buildings situated in Gulistan-e-Jauhar and Gulshan-e-Iqbal. On the other hand, health workers had complained of being refused and rebuked by parents.
However, despite all those setbacks, the EPI Sindh’s deputy programme manager Dr Durre Naz claimed that vaccinators had been able to vaccinate 8,306,750 children out of the targeted 8,063,700 children — 243,050 children more than the intended target. According to her, the immunisation drive was held in 188 union councils of Karachi, out of which 180 union councils reported 80 percent coverage.

Data fudged
Meanwhile, officials of international donor and health agencies rubbished the claim made by EPI Sindh about achieving 103 percent coverage in the province, on grounds that the authorities had on previous occasions concocted fictitious data and forwarded it to national and international bodies.
“Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) is the one of the most prevalent method used to ascertain if the targeted number of children have been vaccinated in a certain area or not. But Karachi has continuously failed in the past few years,” said a Unicef official while talking to The News on the condition of anonymity.
According to him, Karachi and Sindh had never achieved the target of vaccinating the maximum number of children as claimed by EPI officials in order to portray their failures as a success. “They [EPI Sindh officials] have a habit of fabricating data and providing it to monitoring agencies,” he said.
He said another method used to ascertain if polio campaigns were successful was environmental sampling. But then, he said, samples of sewage taken and analysed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on various occasions have also indicated that the polio viruses of various types were present in Karachi’s sewage.
“If the polio vaccination campaigns are as successful as the EPI officials claim, why do polio cases keep emerging in the province every year?” he asked. “Such tactics are being used to hoodwink international and national agencies. The country broke its own record of reporting the highest number of polio cases in a year last year with 328 cases emerging from all over Pakistan.”
Another official from an international agency explained the high rate of coverage to be exaggerating figures provided by area supervisors and health officials working on the level of union councils. “When the figures reach EPI Centre, they are inflated further and this results in claims of vaccinating 103 percent children,” he said.
Meanwhile, the newly-appointed health secretary Iftikhar Shallwani also expressed his dissatisfaction over the performance of EPI Sindh which he admitted had various problems.
However, he praised the dedication and hard work of polio workers whom he said went from house to house while risking their lives.