Daily Times

LAHORE: Advisor to Chief Minister on Health Khawaja Salman Rafique, in the monthly EDOs Conference at the Directorate General Health Services on Sunday, directed the executive district officers (Health) to personally supervise the monitoring of staff for better service delivery.

Primary and Secondary Healthcare Secretary Ali Jan Khan, Punjab Health Services Director General Dr Mukhtar Hussain Syed, programme managers, EDOs of all districts, Chief Minister Roadmap team, UNICEF and WHO representatives participated in the conference.

The meeting took note of the districts with poor Lot Quality Assurance Samples (LQAS) results in the Polio National Immunisation Day (NID) in May and asked the concerned EDOs to address the problems. The advisor directed enhanced surveillance for dengue and polio in Rawalpindi. The LQAS provide an insight into the quality of polio campaigns.

Primary and Secondary Healthcare Secretary Ali Jan Khan said the department was working on revamping the DHQs and THQs and directed EDOs to identify areas of improvement and identify staff in respective districts for planning. He also said recruitment process would be made more efficient with the introduction of testing service.

The Health DG said due to increasing number of measles cases in neighbouring districts of other provinces, the districts bordering these provinces must take special measures.

The Chief Minister Roadmap team identified increase in vaccination coverage as a major milestone and showed performance of all districts. The team shared that vaccinator attendance had gone up significantly and Punjab had made considerable progress within a short span of time. More recently, Neilsen Survey identified Punjab’s routine immunisation coverage at 86 percent.