Charles Ekanem|23 February 2017
Cross River State Primary Healthcare Development Agency on 20th February, 2017 received and distributed 18 Laptops from Centre for Disease Control National Stop Transmission of Polio (NSTOP) to Local Immunization Officers from the 18 LGAs of the State during the Cross River State District Health Information System (DHIS2) Routine Immunization Dashboard implementation training for M & E officers and Immunization officers at Transcorp Hotels, Calabar.
Declaring the training open, the Honorable Commissioner of Health Dr Inyang Asibong who was ably represented by Permanent Secretary State Ministry of Health, Dr Joseph Bassey said immunization is a very important intervention the state is seriously concerned with.
She said strengthening the capacity of monitoring and evaluation officers and immunization officers on the DHIS2 new module in the dashboard is a great development for the state health system.
"This will help improve the State data reporting rate which is relatively low as some M&E officers reporting data from the LGAs are not proactive and committed. The Commissioner lauded AFENET-NSTOP for organizing the training which according to her is timely.
Earlier speaking while giving the welcome remarks, DG CRS Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr Betta Edu said the State under the able leadership of His Excellency, Senator. Prof. Ben Ayade has been so supportive to routine immunization and immunisation campaign exercise. Effort has been made to access more Hard to Reach Areas which remain his number one priority when it comes to immunization in the State. Governor Ben Ayade has insisted that every child be reached with vaccine in CRS at all cost to prevent outbreak of vaccine preventable diseases.
She called on the participants to take the training very serious as the state will strongly fight against under reporting, wrong data capturing, false figures that are inaccurate or data not submitted in a timely manner. Cross River State must submit timely and accurate immunisation data to the National Dashboard. According to her, the State stands for integrity which involves doing the right thing. Not reporting data from the fuel amounts to not doing the job at all "We need this data to make decision and plan, we need this data to show evidence to our donors that immunisation which the support is effective and we can also make a case for more support", said the DG.
Continuing she said the State Government is counting on all M&E Officers for effective and reliable data report that will reflect the true data of the State in the National Dashboard. We need you to take care of this laptop like your baby because you will be held accountable for it. We are very grateful to our partners, AFENET-NSTOP, WHO, UNICEF, EU-SIGN, CUSO, NPHCDA and FMOH for their support for this project which according to her is a stepping stone for the actualization for accurate data report across the 18 LGAs.
Speaking, National Coordinator of AFENET-NSTOP, Dr Endie Waziri said the training is to re-orient participants on proper filling of the modified Routine immunization tools in the new DHIS2 module using Dashboard. She noted that the training will aid participants on how to monitor Routine immunization performance on DHIS2.
Dr Waziri noted that this program will enhance Government ownership of the immunization data systems by Improving monitoring role for the immunization data systems by Government, thus increasing responsibility of all stakeholders in the immunization systems and in the entire NHMIS data system.
"Cross River State is just one of our pilot state this year as we hope to scale up our interventions across the country. We seek the support of Cross River State Government as we carry out this project in the state just as she reminded the LIOs that the system belong to the State and as such they must always report to the State said the National Coordinator.
Also present at the training and handing over ceremony were immunisation Partners, Dr Edmond Egbe Head of WHO Cross River, State Coordinator of UNICEF, Ephraim Chukwu, Emmanuel Musa from EU-SIGN, Dr Obi Ezebilo from NPHCDA and Dr Anthony Adoye from FMOH, Ginnete Pointier from CUSO. The all gave their goodwill messages calling for timely and accurate immunisation data from CRS.
Charles Ekanem
Writes from Calabar
