A WHO software application, the Health Equity Assessment Toolkit (HEAT), conceptualized by Ahmad Reza Hosseinpoor and Anne Schlotheuber of the department of Information, Evidence and Research, came "highly commended" in the prestigious British Medical Association (BMA) book competition on 4 September. Readers can use the software on their computers and mobile devices, to assess health equity in countries for a range of indicators and dimensions. Health equity data are visualized in a variety ...

Strategic reuse of appropriate tools is one of the core principles of the BID Initiative. Over the last five years, we have worked with the governments of Tanzania and Zambia to enhance immunization and overall health service delivery by improving data collection, quality, and use, with interventions such as electronic immunization registries. We have created several planning, implementation, and data strengthening tools for use in Tanzania and Zambi...

A new report has been released that updates information on the occurrence of home-based record (e.g, vaccination cards, child health books) stock-outs. The open access article can be accessed online, and is also attached here. Similar to vaccine stock-outs, disruptions in the supply chain of home-based records (HBRs) are avoidable events that create inefficiencies...

Greetings:   What is the potential and actual role of telehealth for EPI?   Telenetdoctor.com has designed a program that measures the monitoring and preventive care applications between physicians and patients/children.   Appreciate your reply.   Lawrence     ...

Dear viewers  All of us are witnessing rapid multidimensional growth of routine immunization in the current decade. Keeping pace with the rapidly expanding / frequently changing schedule itself is a challenge faced by the service providers, more so in the private sector. Pilot study revealed dangerously poor operational knowledge among the Medicos who are the current and would-be programme managers at various levels. This is conspicuously accentuated by the absence of an unifo...

This is the fourth topic in my six-part Vaccine Supply Chain Futures series (Please see the attached file for the full text)  focused on the introduction of a system of remote temperature monitoring integrated with equipment maintenance management. Remote temperature monitoring systems represent an opportunity for a system-wide improvement in the performance of equipment maintenance and consequently, more reliable vaccine distribution. Remote temperature monitoring automatically trans...

Improving supply chain data visibility and data use are showing real impact in Tanzania's integrated logistics system. A study has just been published in the peer-reviewed journal Global Health: Science and Practice

Dear viewers Attaining and sustaining very high vaccination coverage is the basic dream of RI lovers of any country to promote child health. An ambitious flagship project "Mission Indradhanush" was launched by India on 25th Dec 2014 with similar dream.  Now, Urban area of Belagavi District will be operating "INTENSIFIED  MISSION INDRADHANUSH (IMI)" from Oct 2017. The district nodal officer on witnessing the dramatic increase and sustenance of immunization coverage (Christmas g...

We are trying to contribute bringing the equity focus on immunisation to the forefront of international and national health policies. In a recent overview of systematic reviews we have been able to identify a large body of evidence on imbalances in access to vaccination according to equity attributes. Yet, the evidence on how to overcome those imbalances and achieve a fairer distribution of health care resources remains astonishingly meagre. Additionally, certain attributes (i.e. religion and...

Dear colleagues, The Interagency Supply Chain Group (ISG) comprising 15 global agencies, are actively involved in supporting supply chain efforts across all disease areas.The purpose of this group is to provide better coordinated and more effective support to country efforts in ensuring sustainable access to high quality essential health commodities. The group meets quarterly to address priority issues, with technical working groups established for specific focus areas. This includes ...

Dear TechNet-21 Members, we invite you to follow a moderated discussion just getting started on the International Association of Public Health Logisticians (IAPHL) listserve. You can join the IAHPL, follow the conversation, or sign up for emails here: https://knowledge-gateway.org/iaphl/ We hope you join the conversation! Kevin Pilz on behalf of the IAPHL Team ---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kevin Pi...

At B Medical Systems we have received lately more and more complaints about RCW50EG, absorption type vaccine refrigerator / ice pack freezer, that stopped working or never started working correctly. The largest complaint came from the EPI in Kenya with 200 X RCW50EG not working. The RCW50EG and the smaller version of it, the RCW42EG, have always been known as excellent equipment in the cold chain, and never had any issues, therefore initialy we thought it must just have been wrong use, settin...

Dear Viewers
Global effort is to close the immunization gap [World Immunization week -2016]. This gap is generally attributed to inadequate coverage: 1 in 5 in the world, 1 in 3 in the country and 1 in 5 in Karnataka are missing routine primary vaccination. This is understandable and measures like meticulous micro-plan, monitoring with supportive supervision, regular programme review, All Time Mission Mode [ATM2izing] regular sessions, using extended Immunogram etc can improve the...

The latest WHO and UNICEF estimates of immunization coverage show that 86% of the world’s children received the required 3 doses of diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis containing vaccines (DTP3) in 2015, a coverage level that has been sustained above 85% since 2010.As a result, the number of children who did not receive routine vaccinations has dropped to an estimated 19.4 million, down from 33.8 million in 2000.However, this progress falls short of global immunization targets (90% or more DTP3 vacc...

Interesting paper from EMHJ describing systemic bottlenecks and proposes potentialsolutions for routine EPI in Pakistan...

Dear Colleagues
With the strategic review of the International Association of Public Health Logisticians (IAPHL) six months in, I would like to provide you with an update of what we've accomplished so far and where we hope to go.
You will find my letter athttp://iaphl.org/news/. Please take a moment to read it and have a wider look around the IAPHL website with recently updated

Greetings TechNet Community, I hope this message finds each of you well and successful in your work. I am the new OpenLMIS Community Manager working with the OpenLMIS Initiativeand Community to develop and share this functional and customizable eLMIS solution. Many of you may be familiar with the open source eLMIS system, OpenLMIS.Currently utilized in five geographies throughout Africa, OpenLMIS is acost-effective and widely customizable eLMIS solution built to address...

Immunizations are among the most successful and cost-effective health interventions ever devised. They have reduced child deaths and disease prevalence radically. They have enabled the eradicationof smallpox, lowered the global incidence of polio by more than 99% and neonatal tetanus by 94%, and achieved dramatic reductions in illness, disability and death from common childhood diseases. However, global mobility and interdependence have increased the vulnerability of people everywhere to the ...

For reviewing the performance of a programme it is customary to have a target / expected level of achievement as a denominator before launching a programme. From the numerator collected through formats, indicators were obtained for performance review; for e.g. in NID/SIA’s 0 to 5 yr children are the target children. District Magistrates are used to review against given target. It so happened in the District review meeting following 1st round of Intensification of Routine Immunization (IRI) he...

Dear colleagues: The Alliance Data for Management (D4M) working group is developing a guidance package on immunisation supply chain dashboards that includes a menu of primary supply chain performance indicators for countries to select from that meet their needs. The indicators and dashboards are intended for managers at multiple levels of the immunization supply chain and provide visualisation examples and suggested corrective actions for each indicator. This guidance will be endorsed by the ...

Every quarter, a slide set on introduction status of selected vaccines is updated. The most recent version is available from the web @: http://www.who.int/immunization/monitoring_surveillance/en/ in the right hand column, under the “recent immunization data” menu. If you want to see the worldwide uptake of Hib, PCV, Rota, MCV2, Rubella, YF, JE and HPV, you can either consult the attach...

An Editorial in Indian Pediatrics the journal of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics has again raised doubts about the usefulness of Hepatitis-B vaccination in India. Results of the pilot study launched in Andhra Pradesh to evaluate the usefulness of the vaccine have been published in the latest issue of Indian Pediatrics. In an accompanying editorial Rajeev Kumar and Jacob Puliyel of the Department of Paediatrics at St. Stephens Hospital say the results are clear evidence that the vaccine has ...

Dear Colleagues, Paper immunization registers and register books are critical components of health information systems (HIS) for immunization programs across the globe. Even as many HIS for immunization programs and other health domains move toward electronic and mobile data collection systems, paper registers continue to be relevant tools in many resource-constrained settings. Registers occupy a particularly unique space in HIS as they serve as an intermediary between individual patient reco...

Since 1998, WHO and UNICEF collect annually data on national immunization systems jointly through the WHO/UNICEF Joint Reporting Form on Immunization (JRF) (

The Immunization Summary is an app for visualizing data (tables, graphs, maps) on policies, activities and impact of national immunization systems. These data are reported by WHO & UNICEF Member States annually for incidence, coverage, immunization system indicators and vaccination schedules. The WHO-UNICEF estimates of national immunization coverage constitute an independent technical assessment of coverage. Data are available from 1980 to 2012 (as of July 2013) for 195 countries or territor...

Current immunization coverage rates in the WHO European Region are insufficient to ensure herd immunity and stop the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases. In some countries, rates have now fallen well below the WHO-recommended threshold (95%). Across the Region, up to 1 million infants born each year do not receive all their scheduled vaccinations (2012 estimate). To address this situation, a new tool Guide to tailoring immunization programmes (TIP) has been launched. This guide helps natio...

Many thanks to Diana Chang Blanc for sharing this information with the readers! The Immunization Summary is an app for visualizing (tables, graphs, maps) data on policies, activities and impact of national immunization systems. The IPAD/IPHONE app can now be downloaded directly from the iTunes app store by typing "immunization summary" in the search field, or by clicking the immunization logo from the right column of our pages (

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 Routine Immunization) to begin with. This can serve several functions like: 1. 'LODO meter'; 2. 'LODO inhibitor'; 3. 'Herdimmunometer'; 4. Calculation of 'Child specific drop-outs; 5. Interval betwe...

In day today life we see so many things happening around us which we can capture and use 'philosophically' in our training programmes. On bringing the two gates closer but not touching each other within a minute the red ants 'constructed' a bridge across a gap of 8 to 10 ants length, a similar gap of 40 to 50 feet we may find it difficult to bridge in the 'ants way'. Reaching the beneficiaries is an important event in the service delivery of any programme. Similarly in a long term programme we m...

A few more research papers on immunization coverage and related topics from Tasnim Partapuri. For those who want to download it directly, they can do so using the following link: