Researchers from Aga Khan University are set to launch a nationwide survey aimed at improving the performance of Pakistan’s immunisation system.
Low vaccine coverage across the country poses a variety of problems for the country’s health system. These range from the persistence of polio – which has been eradicated outside of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria – as well as the prevalence of preventable diseases such as childhood tuberculosis, hepatitis B and types of pneumonia and measles.
The last
A group photo of Dr Atif Habib (left), Dr Sajid Soofi (centre) and Mr Imtiaz Hussain (right).
survey took place in 2013 and the latest official immunisation data shows coverage levels as low as 29 per cent in the province of Balochistan with one in five children failing to receive vaccines in the best-performing province of Punjab.
The Third-Party Verification Immunization Coverage Survey (TPVICS), a US $6.5 million project, will be designed and conducted by the University under the country’s five-year National Immunization Support Project* which seeks to deliver universal access to vaccines against nine preventable diseases, one of the key targets under Sustainable Development Goal 3: Good Health and Well-being.
The TPVICS will be conducted by field staff in every district across the length and breadth of the country who will visit homes and basic health units to ascertain the vaccination status of children at two points of time: the 5-month mark, and a point between 12 months and 23 months of age.
Besides data on the above key disbursement-linked indicators, the survey will also gather valuable data on the health system’s performance. These include the reasons for missed vaccinations, issues affecting the availability of vaccines and insights into how and where services are being accessed. The survey will focus on equity considerations in immunisation, whether vaccines can be accessed fairly, by gathering demographic details about the gender, age and financial status of recipients.
These findings will be compared against provincial estimates to verify the accuracy of past and existing data, to generate regional comparisons of the performance of the health system and to pinpoint strategies to further enhance coverage across the country.
The TPVICS will be run in partnership with Pakistan’s federal and provincial governments, the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI the Vaccine Alliance, and the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
Dr Sajid Bashir Soofi, an associate professor at Aga Khan University, and Dr Atif Habib, an assistant professor at AKU, are the principal investigator and co-principal investigator on the grant respectively. Mr Imtiaz Hussain, senior manager (research) at AKU is the lead survey coordinator and Professor Zulfiqar A. Bhutta is the senior technical advisor to the TPVICS.
* The National Immunization Support Project is a five-year initiative developed in consensus with the federal and provincial governments and donor agencies that seeks to assess gaps and bottlenecks in Pakistan’s immunisation programme and to provide recommendations to ensure improvement in routine immunization coverage.
