The fight against vaccine-preventable diseases in the Lao People's Democratic Republic received a major boost recently when the country introduced the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC) Stop Transmission of Polio (STOP) Immunization and Surveillance Data Specialists (ISDS) project, with support from the World Health Organization (WHO).
This makes the Lao People's Democratic Republic the first country in the WHO Western Pacific Region, and the second in the world, to undertake this type of collaboration, which trains international public health professionals with local counterparts to help countries enhance their national immunization and surveillance programmes.
Under the project, five international ISDS participants will partner with five local counterparts to be deployed to one of six locations—Vientiane Capital, Vientiane, Oudomxay, Khammuane, Champassack and Xiengkhuang provinces—for the next two years. To ensure the sustainability of the programme, the STOP ISDS Lao counterparts will continue to improve data management quality after the STOP ISDS project in the country is completed.
This is significant for the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, a country which is no longer poliovirus-infected but remains at risk for outbreaks. As such, having a robust immunization and surveillance programme is essential.
The Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Phouthone Muongpak, said, “The ISDS project will improve immunization and surveillance data in the country, which will be used for policy making and introducing key interventions that will effectively address vaccine-preventable diseases.” The Ministry of Health, National Immunization Programme welcomes the support from the US CDC and WHO.
Dr Juliet Fleischl, WHO Representative to the Lao People's Democratic Republic, said, “WHO is pleased to be the convening agency for this ISDS project with US CDC to support the Ministry of Health in the Lao People's Democratic Republic. This complements our work on health information systems; using information to improve access to services that are needed by the community and capacity-building for health staff. We hope to see the health staff working to integrate the ISDS project with District Health Information Software 2 that they use to improve data quality at the subnational levels and use the data to focus service delivery to reach areas of greatest need.”
Following the first successful project in Kenya, the Global Immunization Division at US CDC reached out to the Lao People's Democratic Republic Ministry of Health and WHO to implement a similar project in the country. “The interest and commitment from both parties has been instrumental in moving this project forward,” said Ms Anna Callaghan, project coordinator from US CDC.
The primary focus of the STOP ISDS strategy is to improve the quality of vaccine-preventable disease surveillance and immunization data within the six deployment provinces. High-quality data are needed for decision-making to improve the health of the population in the Lao People's Democratic Republic. The STOP ISDS participants and their Lao counterparts will work with local health staff to identify specific data-related challenges and to come up with sustainable solutions to address those problems.
Mr Morris Antony, one of the international ISDS participants from Kenya, had worked with the Kenyan Government as a data manager for 13 years at both the central and district levels. In addition, he taught as a lecturer for health information management for more than a year. He said, “The Lao Health Information System is similar to that of Kenya; we use the District Health Information Software, which is currently used in the Lao People's Democratic Republic for health information management. In Kenya, many of the recommendation from the ISDS were accepted and adopted by the Government.”
The STOP ISDS participants and their local counterparts received three weeks of intensive training in Uganda to prepare them for their new roles in the provinces where they will be based for two years. One of the participants, Dr Kouxiong Sayteng, is from the Hmong ethnic group and shared his excitement to be a part of this project. He said, “The training provided many useful tools for immunization surveillance and data management which can be used for work at the district and health facility levels.”