The Emergency Operating Centers (EOCs) were created by eHealth Africa and other partners including the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO) and Public Health England to serve as centers for the emergency management and response coordination of infectious diseases. The Bauchi state EOC was established in 2014.
As part of the response coordination of Polio, the State Emergency Routine Immunization Coordination Center (SERICC) and other partners manage immunization activities in Bauchi State using the EOC as the command center.
Immunization Plus Days (IPDs) are the primary polio intervention in several states. They are supplemental 3-5 day immunization campaign activities aimed at increasing herd immunity and reaching areas that have either been identified as high- risk locations or have low routine immunization coverage rates.
Before 2014, each Local government areas (LGA) presented daily reports of IPDs activities to partners separately which led to multilateral reporting lines and sometimes conflicting feedback from multiple partners addressing the same issues. This fragmented system prevented the LGA teams from making any real progress. To address this challenge, the World Health Organization (WHO) began anchoring a state level debrief meeting where the teams from all LGAs in the state come in to report and address their challenges. However, it was not institutionalized and the state had little or no control over the meeting.
Adamu Abdullahi is a Bauchi state technical officer and a member of the State Emergency Routine Immunization Coordination Centre in Bauchi state. He is part of a team that is responsible for monitoring and coordinating IPDs and other routine immunization activities across all 20 LGAs of Bauchi State.
The establishment of the Bauchi EOC meant that the state was able to lead and coordinate the daily state level debrief meetings. Adamu and other SERICC members, as well as representatives of partner organizations, can easily visualize IPD reports and provide appropriate, useful feedback in a coordinated manner.
“During my supervision of the LGA IPD activities, I saw different partner representatives taking note of issues and providing feedback to the LGA immunization teams. Sometimes, you would have different suggestions and comments on the same issue. It is very confusing and the LGA teams often don’t know which to accept. Evening review meetings have streamlined our polio campaigns because I can provide input to decision making and also sanction defaulters during IPDs. Thanks to the internet connectivity at the EOC, we can view reports on the dashboard immediately they are sent by the LGA teams on the field. This helps us review the percentage coverage of the IPDs. Then we can decide and agree on how many days we should allocate for mop-up and which LGAs will be part of the mop-up exercise.”
This effective coordination of partners and state feedback allows for the free flow of ideas and strategies to motivate LGA vaccination teams to cover even more areas. It was at one of such meetings that the reward and sanction strategy was suggested and adopted. Consistently underperforming LGAs are given official warnings while high- performing LGAs are given awards and certificates at an official ceremony at the EOC.
Without the coordinating platform that the EOC provides, SERICC would not have been able to strengthen the polio campaign activities in accordance with the National Polio eradication emergency plan.
“Now, we have included traditional leaders in the state level review meeting. This collaboration gives us the support of the communities and increases our chances of reaching more children. The Emir of Dass LGA chairs the state level meeting.”
More than a center for emergency coordination, the EOC represents Bauchi state’s efforts to monitor and plan immunization activities and reach more children in a coordinated manner on a daily basis.
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