KP health department gives 3,000 smartphones to EPI vaccination teams

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Pakistani Polio Vaccination Team administering polio drops to children during "Anti-polio campaign" at a suburb of Lahore, Pakistan on October 24, 2014. The World Health Organization said that ten more polio cases have surfaced in Pakistan, bringing the number of new cases to 290, a record figure that authorities blame on attacks by insurgents targeting vaccination teams. (Photo by Rana Sajid Hussain / Pacific Press/Sipa USA)

ISLAMABAD: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Health Department has given 3,000 smartphones to Expanded Programme for Immunisation (EPI) vaccination teams to monitor their performance.

According to a private news channel report, all the smartphones would be connected to a central dashboard with the help of which the health officers of all the districts would be able to access the vaccination teams online and monitor their activities.

According to the provincial information department, the health department and Telenor Pakistan signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to bring the activities of vaccination teams under a monitoring framework.

The KP Health Department Secretary Abid Majeed said that the provincial government had earlier provided motorcycles to workers administering vaccines for different diseases. He said that the provision of smartphones would further improve the performance of these teams.

Under the smartphone service, Telenor Pakistan would provide 4 GB internet data, 300 free call minutes to every network, and 500 free text messages to the vaccination teams on a monthly basis.

At the end of the MoU signing ceremony, the health department secretary handed over the smartphones to the district health officers concerned for distribution among different teams.