Islamabad, March 31, 2015 - Upon recommendations of the National Advisory Group, a paradigm shift is seen in the Polio Eradication Initiative where chronically missed children are being tracked for vaccination through all possible interventions. The goal of Polio Eradication relies on reaching out 5-6% missed children that remain unapproachable in each campaign. The National Emergency Operations Centre is exploring all means to track these missed children including vaccination at permanent transit points, installation of health camps in high risk areas, and inclusion of female community volunteers in the program.

In order to have reliable information regarding missed children in the high risk UCs of Pakistan, a need of a mechanism was felt to collect information, therefore National Emergency Operations Centre has taken an initiative to track all missed children in high risk Union Councils of the country through specialized “Data Support Centre” to facilitate the collection, collation and data entry across the high risk districts.The data collection has been initiated during the recent National Polio campaign, of March 16-18, 2015.

“To have the verifiable information regarding missed children in the High Risk Union Councils (HRUCs) of Pakistan, the mechanism for collecting information directly from the vaccinator tally sheets has been put in place”, .said Senator Ayesha Raza Farooq while reviewing the impact of the initiative.

During the National Polio Campaign of March, the establishment and operationalization of 11 Data Support Centers (DSC) across the country to collect the tally sheets from the 554 HRUCs in 39 districts is formulized. High Risk UCs identified in Balochistan were from district Quetta, Mastung, Nasirabad, Zhob, KillaAbdulla, Pishin. High Risk UCs of Punjab were identified from Districts of Lahore, Faisalabad, Pakpatten Rawalpindi, Rajanpur, Multan and attack, In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA, high risk UCs were distributed among Khyber, Peshawar, Charsadda, Bannu, FR Bannu, North Waziristan, LakkiMarwat, Hangu, D.I.Khan, FR D.I.Khan, S.Waziristan, Tank, Mardan, Buner, Swabi, and Nowshera while data is being sent to Data Support Centre from entire Sindh.

These data centers manned by over 400 data entry clerks serve as the central repository and collection point for recording and data entry of the vaccinator tally sheets on daily basis. The Data Support Centre record ALL missed children regardless of reason.

“The efficient transmission of specific Missed children data directly from the field will facilitate timely coverage and will thus be instrumental in delivering high quality SIAs across the HRUCs”, opined Dr. Rana Muhammad Safdar, National EOC Coordinator.

During the National Polio Campaign of March, tally sheets from frontline workers were computerized and set online by the data operators of the Data Support centrefor real time response and follow ups. During last campaign (16^th-18^thMarch 2015) as of 29^thMarch 2015, data from 19,694tally sheets have been entered into the database at the 11 DSCs.Total number of households visited are717,506 and the number of children recorded are 1,457,287. Of the 1,457,287children, 1,382,212were vaccinated and 75,075not vaccinated. Data recorded by the Data Support Centre for March NIDs shows that total of missed children 75,075 during first round of vaccination in high risk UCs were tracked and over 22 thousand children out of total missed children were vaccinated during catch up days.