This blog by Judith Kaufmann has been cross-posted from the Health Affairs blog. Many thanks. The week of December 17 was a grim one for the polio eradication effort in Pakistan. Seven Pakistani women health workers and two Pakistani men, all working to ensure the success of the polio campaign, ...

Cross-posted from the GAVI Alliance website with thanks! Professor Hans Rosling is a doctor and a professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. At the GAVI Partners' Forum, he showed how GAVI’s mission to increase access to immunisation fits into a new way of looking at...

Many thanks to Robert Davis for this lead! Recent Technical Updates POSSIBLE INTERRUPTION OF MEASLES VIRUS TRANSMISSION, UGANDA 2006-2009 Full text, with tables and figures, is at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3204633/pdf/10-0753_finalD.pdf SINGLE ENDEMIC GENOTYPE OF MEAS...

Hi, I would greatly appreciate your expert opinion on a technical question regarding extensive field monitoring of solar generator. The objective is to carry out a long-term, rather in-depth field monitoring of solar (DD) fridge installations for their long-term performance evaluation and programma...

I have never seen any document suggesting that low birth weight is a contraindication for new-born vaccination for institutional deliveries, although I have seen few paediatricians suggesting that, in case of low birth weight, vaccination of the new-born should be avoided. Please let me know yo...

Data from two session sites were scanned through the 'IMMUNOGRAM' tool for enumerating the vaccination status to obtain multi indicators. It was observed that both the areas achieved high vaccination coverage except for the measles second dose: 8% in one area and 0% in the other. On the coming regu...

Cross-posted from the GAVI CSO forum with many thanks. As you may know, a United Nations Environment Programme treaty is currently being negotiated on mercury. A number of organizations have been working to ensure that the instrument does not restrict access to the vaccine preservative, thiomersa...

For achieving >90% coverage in the shortest period at the session site level, a one-pager offline tool, which I wish to name as 'IMMUNOGRAM', is adequate. This tool incorporates the basic principle of 'My Village My Home', suitably expanded for IWs (Immunization Weeks) of IRI (Intensification of...

The Immunization Practices Advisory Committee (IPAC), established in 2010, supports and advises the Director of the Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals (IVB), with the review and/or formulation of immunization practices, operational standards, tools and technologies to strengthen an...

Dear colleagues, With the GAVI Partners' Forum and Africa Regional Conference on Immunization taking place in Dar Es Salaam in the coming two weeks, and with the recent endorsement of the Global Vaccine Action Plan, immunization is receiving a great deal of attention. Over the past three years, t...

Cold chain handlers, medical officers and district immunization officers often face problems in calculating the cold space required for storing vaccines at the planning unit level. Hence, the volume of each carton is measured and arranged as per the existing guidelines to simplify the theoretical pr...

Diarrheal disease is among the five leading causes of morbidity and mortality among under-five children in Malawi. In the multiple indicator survey conducted in 2006, nearly a quarter (23.3%) of under-five children reported having a diarrhea episode in the previous two weeks. Rotavirus infection con...

India, with 61% fully immunized...

Cross-posted from the CDC website with thanks. In September 2011, CDC initiated a pilot project to test the implementation, using industry barcoding standards, of 2D barcodes on vaccine products. A 2D vaccine barcoding manufacturer's forum was conducted in January 2012 to inform manufacturers an...

Many thanks to Tasnim Partapuri for directing our attention here! UNICEF developed the Meena Communication Initiative (MCI) as a mass communication project aimed at changing perceptions and behaviour that hamper the survival, protection and development of girls in South Asia. Following eight y...

by Ryan McWhorter, Logistimo, and Dan Brigden, PATH To accompany the article “South Sudan deploys new mobile phone-based stock management tool” in this month’s newsletter, project Optimize has published http://www.flickr.com/photos/projectoptimize/sets/72157631611716301/with/8026383968/" target="_b...

An interview with Lisa Ganley-Leal and Pauline Mwinzi, Epsilon Therapeutics Earlier this year, Lisa Ganley-Leal and Pauline Mwinzi were awarded $100,000 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through its Grand Challenges Explorations initiative. They hope to demonstrate that selling vaccines ...

an interview with MIT’s UAV vaccine delivery team Earlier this year, Dr. George Barbastathis and five graduate students—Nikhil Vadhavkar, Adam Pan, Vyas Ramanan, Andrew Warren, and Justin Lee—from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were awarded $100,000 by the Bill & Melinda Gate...

by Hamadou Modibo Dicko, Philippe Jaillard, and Benjamin Schreiber, AMP; Bruce Y. Lee, University of Pittsburgh; and Heidi Lasher, consultant to project Optimize To improve immunization program performance, the Government of Benin is using cutting-edge modeling tools to better understand how chan...

by Kamel Senouci and Lara Gautier, AMP Many national immunization programs rely on the professional advice of national immunization technical advisory groups (NITAGs) to help them make critical decisions on introducing new vaccines. Implemented in April 2008 by Agence de Médecine Préventive (AMP)...