Today marks day one of the Sub National Immunization day in Turkana district.During the day all the three Turkana district did their launch which was graced by high level diginitaries among them the District commisioner of Turkana Central, Dr. Ben Nkowane from WHO Geneva, Dr. Shem Kiptoon ,WHO KCO and Johnny Musyoka , National Disease surveillance coordinator.

Congratulations to the teams on the ground for good job done in combating the spread of Polio. Despite the short interval additional doses (SIAD) strategy done in Kenya for the first time. Special thanks to WHO, CDC, Datadyne, and District Medical officers of health in districs bordering the larger Turkana and above all our vollunteers and vaccinators for braving the scorching sun and ensuring that the districts met their campaign objectives.

We needed to be on top of everything during the campaign. No one wants to know the short comings way past the campaign has ended as the data/information will be of no value. As public health team monitoring the campaign we need real time data as we all know that in order to have a quality campaign one need accurate and fast flow of information in order to act on the strenth and weakness noted on the ground. We turned to EpiSurveyor.

We are now deep in the 5th round of the Emergency polio campaign in Kenya.The activity is taking place in Riftvalley province targetting districts bordering the larger Turkana District.The districts have had more than three rounds of polio immunization campaign since, march this year with the main objective being stopping the circulation and transmission of the wild polio virus in Kenya.The last case of indeginous polio case in Kenya dates back to 1984 and since then only two outbreaks have been reported with the current outbreak being linked to importation from Sou

Today marks the second day of the campaign.Health workers need commendation on the hard work they are doing in order to reach all the children.I am in Turkana district we temperature was above 30 degrees .Today we went to Turkwell division ,Turkana central with Dr. Janet Kombich form KEMRI.Its part of the Monitoring and Evaluation where we administred the Team visit and Inprocess checklist using the Mobile version of the EpiSurveyor.Pictured above Janet administering the form.

So Kenya, hit by imported polio cases from south Sudan, is getting ready to begin two rounds of polio vaccination. Luckily, they will be using EpiSurveyor on mobile phones to make the data collection aspects a lot easier -- they'll need to collect data to determine, among other things, what percentage of the target population of children was actually vaccinated.

After the presentation by DataDyne on the capability of the new EpiSurveyor Mobile Version 1.0 which was released last month, the monitors from WHO,CDC,Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation unanimously agreed to use the mobile version of the Episurveyor for the polio campaign activities which will be conducted for the 12 districts bordering Turkana in Rift Valley province.The country will use a new strategy known as short interval additional doses.

Woke to no water in my Nakuru "hotel" room, but wasn't going to let that get me down. Spent the day with Yusuf, shadowing him as he managed the field officers vaccinating and interviewing moms. Pictured is one of the officers interviewing a mom whose child got vaccinated earlier that day.

I arrived in Nairobi late last night and took the first bus to Nakura to see the teams from Ministry of Health working on the mass polio campaign. As the campaign winds down, most children have been vaccinated, but teams from the Ministry have been pounding the pavement (well, the dirt roads) going house to house to verify that a high percentage of kids actually did get vaccinated. 

The Kenya emergency polio SIAs (supplemental immunization activities) continue, with the data collection being done on cellphones and PDAs using EpiSurveyor. Pictured is Yusuf Ajack Ibrahim (standing, in white t-shirt), Ministry of Health staff attached to DataDyne's Kenya office, conducting a field interview on a Palm Treo cellphone.