“Keep this immunisation card safe and remember to take it to the health facility on your next visit. In all you will have to make six visits to the health facility and your child will be protected from the nine vaccine-preventable diseases,” says Rizwana Yasmeen as she explains the schedule to a young mother at the Basic Health Unit (BHU) in Mirpurkhas, some 250km from Karachi.
“Remember it’s free. You don’t have to pay anything,” she adds when the mother and the baby are about to leave.
Full of energy and vitality, Yasmeen, 24, is among a brigade of almost 100,000 Lady Health Workers (LHWs), in Pakistan, trained under the government’s National Programme for Family Planning and Primary Health Care. Yasmeen makes sure that she uses all her powers and time to ensure that the mother returns to the centre to complete her child’s immunisation.
Explaining the importance of vaccination to parents, especially mothers is vital for the success of Pakistan’s immunisation programme; for this health workers need to be trained in communication skills
“The district’s [immunisation] coverage would increase manifold if every health worker were equipped with the same convincing skills as Yasmeen,” says Dr Khalid, medical officer at the BHU, observing the scene. He did not quite expect the talk between the two women to generate such an interest on the mother’s part to ensure that her child is fully vaccinated.
“There is no one else to give her that information. I am her only source. So I have to make sure she has absorbed everything I said. They look upon me with great respect,” points out Yasmeen.
Whether being a woman gives Yasmeen an edge to relate with mothers, or whether it has something to do with her skills, is hard to tell. One thing is for sure, the mother who just walked out of the health facility will not miss her child’s next due date for vaccination.
Launched in the 70s, the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) aims to protect children by immunising them and reducing mortality rate caused by vaccine-preventable diseases. It includes free-of-cost vaccination of all children between zero to 15 months against nine vaccine-preventable diseases (childhood tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, hepatitis B, diphtheria, pertussis, neonatal tetanus, haemophilis influenza B., measles and pneumonia), and pregnant women against tetanus.