Sri Lanka training hub for South-East Asian facilitators of National Immunisation Programmes

Sri Lanka with its successful track record of eradicating or controlling vaccine preventable diseases has become a training hub for the South-East Asian countries on establishing a dialogue and cultivating best practices in Expanded Immunisation Programmes (EPI),

covering a spectrum of related topics such as EPI disease surveillance, cold-chain management, vaccine safety, waste disposal, grass-root level immunisation planning and documentation.

A comprehensive immunisation training programme was conducted in Sri Lanka recently with the objectives of exposing immunisation advocates of regional countries to strong immunisation management methodologies and systems of Sri Lanka, strengthening facilitation skills of core national trainers in training subordinates in immunisation and to draw-up country specific follow up actions to improve the training capacity of national immunisation programmes.

Dr. Paba Palihawadana, Chief Epidemiologist, Ministry of Health said, “Our immunisation driver has not only effectively controlled or eliminated all traditional childhood vaccine preventable diseases through sustained infant immunisation coverage but also extended same control up to the adulthood with very high coverage schedules against tetanus, diphtheria, Japanese b encephalitis and immunisation of women in child bearing ages against rubella.”

Dr. Palihawadana further stated that the epidemiological service of Sri Lanka has now established itself as one of the strongest in the South-East Asian region and one of the most accomplished in the world. “On these grounds, Sri Lanka was selected as the training hub for this year’s immunisation, train the trainer programme,” she affirmed.

Immunisation trainers from countries such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, Korea, Indonesia, India, Maldives, Thailand, Myanmar, Timor, Nepal and special participants from UNICEF and WHO took part in a five-day training programme on a capacity development programme of National Immunisation Programme managers of regional countries.

“During the five-day comprehensive training programme the participants underwent both in-house and field training on planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating immunisation programmes at institutional level and field level,” claimed Dr. Sudath Peiris, Asst. Epidemiologist, Ministry of Health.

“In addition to achieving remarkable success rates in taming communicable diseases, Sri Lanka has been able to establish a strong surveillance system to manage adverse effects following immunisation (AEFI) As such, WHO has recognised Sri Lanka as a Global Training Centre for AEFI surveillance and Sri Lanka has so far trained immunisation managers from 16 countries sent by the WHO,” Dr. Peiris further stated.

The National Immunisation Programme in Sri Lanka has been identified as a long term investment by the Government. Immunisation has been efficiently decentralised across the country and has been embedded into the maternal and child health care programmes initiated by the Ministry of Health. As a result its value, over the years, has been very strongly internalised among all Sri Lankans while positioning Sri Lanka in the world health map as a learning centre for immunisation.