ILOILO CITY — A series of training for health workers is ongoing in this city to arm them with a new strategy to boost the immunization coverage in the metropolis.
Dr. Jennifer T. Anceno, Iloilo City EPI Medical Coordinator, in an interview on Thursday said that City Health Office (CHO) staff, midwives and barangay health workers (BHWs) were trained on the “Reaching Every Purok” strategy hoping to increase the inoculation coverage, which is now on a downward trend.
She said the immunization coverage for children not over one year old in Iloilo City was only 63 percent of the 12,505 target coverage in 2017.
Dr. Anceno said that the decline is “quite alarming.”
She said that program was affected by the recent issues on vaccination and parents have lost their confidence on its effect. Likewise, there are also parents with attitude problem, such as they will not go to the center unless are they are picked up from their places.
“Hopefully we can reach the benchmark, which is 95 percent,” said Anceno.
Using this strategy, health workers will go down to the “purok” or zone level instead of looking at their coverage as one barangay. They can come up with a zone visit each day until the entire barangay is saturated.
Anceno hoped that the health staff will be diligent with their work by “reaching out to every purok”.
The strategy targets children below one year old, making sure that before they go beyond this age they are fully immunized. It means that they have already received shots or doses of BCG, DPT, Hepatitis B, Haemophilus Influenza Type B and oral polio. At nine months, they should be immunized with vaccines against MMR (measles, mumps and rubella).
The training started with a review of the basic concepts of the expanded program of immunization and the involvement of the community, she said.
At the moment, they are doing a house-to-house visitation because of measles cases that were recorded, she said.
Iloilo City has two confirmed cases, with one adult.
“Measles per se is not deadly but be wary of its complications,” she said, citing pneumonia, encephalitis, or blood infections.
In August they will be implementing a school-based immunization to administer booster dose of the MMR, tetanus and diphtheria to Grades 1 and 7 in public schools and human papilloma vaccine (HPV) to Grade 4 pupils. (PNA)
