ISLAMABAD: Minister for National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination Saira Afzal Tarar on Wednesday said that the government would provide all out support to strengthen the national Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI). Addressing the National Annual EPI Review meeting here, the minister said that the programme review would help analysing its performance besides noting the strengths and weaknesses. She said that this self-assessment of the programme helped aligning the strategies for addressing the gaps and challenges. The success of any programme lied in good planning and effective implementation of the programme, she added. She said that the EPI review would give an opportunity to improve future planning and programme implementation through experience sharing and brainstorming, so that innovative and cost effective strategies were devised to address the underlying challenges and bottlenecks. She said under the stewardship of the Ministry of National Health Services, a great deal of effort had been made in few years by the programme. The development of PC-Is for the programme was indeed a great challenge in terms of securing the provincial and federal budgets specially for the procurement of vaccines, which have been approved. She highlighted some of past years’ achievements of the programme which were the finalisation and initiation of the National Immunisation Support Programme with a multi donor trust fund. She said that Pakistan had been cleared from default status and fulfilled its co-financing obligation with GAVI for 2015 which was lagging behind since year 2012 with special thanks to GAVI for extending flexibility and the introduction of new vaccines like IPV and Rota virus in routine immunisation. She said the programme conducted nationwide assessment for cold chain capacity and a national application for GAVI CCE-OP had been approved in the first round. This will resolve the major issue of vaccine storage and maintaining the quality of vaccine with minimal wastage. It was also encouraging to see the positive feedback from the vaccine audit team done by a third party and GAVI team up to the provincial level. With this amount of effort, the ground had been laid for continuous improvements in all domains of immunisation, she added. She called upon the provinces to redouble their efforts to achieve the targets through effective plans of action within the defined time lines. She said that there was a strong realisation at every forum that synergy between EPI and PEI was the solution to sustain polio eradication. “I urge all the provinces to strengthen routine immunisation with a zeal to work against the Vaccine Preventable Diseases,” the minister added. She said it was gratifying to see the level of commitment and coordination amongst all stakeholders who were putting their efforts into improving the immunisation coverage despite challenges. She assured full support to the provinces in ensuring uninterrupted vaccine supply, coordinating for a uniform policy guideline and designing the plans in compliance with international commitments. She thanked development partners including GAVI, USAID, BMGF, JICA and technical partners World Bank , UNICEF0 and WHO for their continued assistance to the programme.