Your role as a health extension worker is to lead the following activities, based on the national EPI recommendations:
- Take every opportunity to identify and immunise all eligible children.
- Ensure all eligible children attending the health post are immunised according to the recommended schedules.
- Make immunisation services routinely available at convenient times for mothers, ideally every day.
- Involve the community in the schedule for outreach immunisation sessions, so that you cover the target population within the target period.
There are five key operations that you need to undertake to run an EPI service efficiently and effectively, which are summarised in the Box below. You will learn about these key operations in detail in later study sessions in this Module.
Box 1.2. Five Key Operations for an Effective Immunisation Service
- Service delivery: involves strategies and activities in giving safe and timely vaccinations
- Logistics: includes delivery of vaccines and necessary equipment to the sites of use transport, management of the "cold chain" and safe waste disposal.
- Vaccine supply and quality: includes forecasting of vaccine needs,procurement, monitoring of vaccine usage rates and vaccine safety.
- Disease surveillance: involves monitoring of disease incidence, record keeping and reporting (see the communicable diseases module).
- Advocacy and communication: consists of social mobilisation, advocacy, and community education on immunisation and vaccination program promotion(see on health education module study session 4, 13, and 14)