Government seeks to boost national immunisation coverage

In a bid to boost immunisation in the Republic of Congo, the government recently trained 40 health workers from Pool, Likouala, and Sangha regions in the planning and supervision of vaccination campaigns. An official from the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI), Gisele Motom, told IRIN on Monday that the weeklong training was necessary because of a decrease in vaccination coverage in the country. "It enabled us to discuss ways and means of increasing coverage, and provided participants with ideas and practical tools for remedying this deficit," she said. The course, led by vaccination trainers from the region of Plateaux, focused on the planning, supervision and communication of vaccination campaigns, and the proper handling and management of vaccines. Immunisation coverage in the Congo has decreased dramatically in recent years due to civil wars, which resulted in mass displacements of populations, often left inaccessible to humanitarian agencies because of insecurity. During the civil war that erupted in 1997, the EPI cold chain network was pillaged and destroyed, resulting in a nationwide shortage of vaccines. As part of its worldwide campaign against polio, the UN Children's Fund managed to rehabilitate the network by the end of 2000. International NGO MSF has defined the cold chain as "a continuous system of conservation and distribution of vaccines, at a precise temperature, from the production to the administration, guaranteeing their effectiveness". Vaccines must be kept chilled with a certain temperature range to preserve their effectiveness. To do this, a cold chain must be established. Immunisation efforts were estimated to have reached only 50 percent of the target population in 2000. "The ideal is to reach 100 percent," Motom said.