Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) through the Japanese support to the Pacific Immunization Program Strengthening (J-PIPS) project, convenes annual regional training on Expanded Programme of Immunization (EPI) from 9th to 13th November 2009, at Fiji Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Supply Service Center (FPBSC).
The training is co-hosed by Ministry of Health and J-PIPS project with substantial support from World Health Organization (WHO), UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and AusAID.
WHO report indicates that remarkable achievement has been made in many Pacific island countries for the last five years. However, due to its nature, which vaccines are destroyed easily when handled improperly, the situation does not allow optimism.
To ensure high performance or improve immunization activities, it is important for every single nurse to acquire appropriate knowledge and understanding on immunization as well as for the parents to understand the importance of vaccination of the children.
In this context, JICA offers 5 days regional training, which is one of the crucial interventions to strengthen the knowledge and skills of EPI related health workers and technicians.
The training consists of two courses: EPI Management and Cold Chain maintenance and is designed as Training of Trainers (TOT), by which participant will acquire the updated information on EPI and improve the teaching skills, subsequently, enabling them to train other colleagues and nurses in their own country.
In this context, the target groups of the EPI management course are advanced EPI trainers from respective countries, that is EPI managers, coordinators and master trainers, who have worked / will work as a trainer in their country, while cold chain maintenance course targets at a technician who is directly involved in cold chain equipment maintenance in the country.
A total of 38 participants from 13 Pacific island countries attend the training: Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea (PNG).
The J-PIPS project commenced its activities in March 2005, in response to requests made by the Government of 13 Pacific island countries to ensure that each of the participating countries of the Project has the capacity to independently manage their own EPI program.
The ultimate goal of the project is to ensure all children in the targeted areas have access to effective vaccines.