National Immunization Strategy (NIS) development hands-on workshop for selected countries

Dates and venue: 9-12 December 2024 - Muscat, Oman

Participants: Managers and Directors of the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) from Ministry of Health (MOH), National Immunization Technical Advisory Groups (NITAG) chairs or members, Immunization technical officers of WHO and UNICEF
Purpose: Build capacity of EPI country teams to develop a robust NIS

Overview: EMRO conducted a hands-on workshop to support ten countries in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) in developing their National Immunization Strategies (NIS). It’s worthy to mention that many countries in EMR are in the process of developing their NIS and many others will start in the near future.

Participants included NITAG chairs, national EPI managers, planning and finance officers, and WHO and UNICEF. The participants practiced the main steps in NIS development which include the preparations, situational analyses, strategy development, monitoring and evaluation frameworks, resource estimation, budget dialogue and approval. Hands-on exercises on situation analysis, strategy development and monitoring and evaluation were done using the EMR NIS toolkit. The NIS Cost was also used to demonstrate resource estimation, costing and budgeting.

Country teams shared the pre-populated NIS components of the EMR NIS toolkit with the local data prior to the workshop which was then used for group work. In the post workshop evaluation, the participants were satisfied with the workshop, provided excellent feedback on the benefits of the workshop demonstrated through the active engagement of all participants. By the end of the event, attendees had gained practical expertise and made significant progress on their draft NIS plans.

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Authors: Gerald Sume, Mohammed Osama Mere, and Mohamad Nihad Alyousfi, World Health Organization/Eastern Mediterranean Region
Photo: WHO EMRO