Abuja, 10 May 2016 - Having interrupted the transmission of indigenous wild poliovirus in 2015 and put in place measures to further improve and sustain certification standard surveillance; Nigeria has now embarked on efforts towards ensuring adequate documentation of surveillance and immunization activities towards certification.

Adequate documentation for at least three (3) years is one of the key requirements for certification. This is in addition to maintaining polio-free status with certification standard surveillance, availability of an importation response plan and laboratory containment of poliovirus.

In line with the above, a national orientation workshop was conducted for State Epidemiologists and surveillance officers in Enugu, Nigeria on 05 May, 2016.  The main objective of the workshop was to acquaint participants on the requirements for adequate surveillance and immunization documentation at all levels (State, local government area and health facility).

Regardless of all the efforts hitherto put in place to achieve polio eradication, Nigeria will not be certified as polio-free “without adequate and appropriate documentation and archiving for external scrutiny in order to convince the world about the quality of our records”, Dr Andrew Etsano, the Incident Manager (IM) of the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) emphasized at the orientation meeting.

The surveillance and immunization systems in Nigeria have over the years, established the culture of documentation, however, this is not uniformly carried out and the need exists to ensure that the required documentation is complete and standardized at all levels. Since most of the documentation required for certification is surveillance related, emphasis was given to surveillance documentation during the workshop. Practical demonstration of documentation and archiving was facilitated by the Enugu state team. A Certification dash board to monitor status of documentation at all levels was also discussed.

Arising from the meeting, State Epidemiologists are expected to cascade the training to the LGA DSNOs according to a schedule developed during the workshop, to be completed during May 2016. The State Epidemiologists are also expected to identify and address residual documentation gaps and to henceforth share timely state updates on the status of documentation to the NEOC, using the certification dash board that will be monitored on weekly basis.

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For more information, please contact:

Technical contacts:

Dr Fiona Braka; Tel: +234 703 170 5252; Email: brakaf [at] who.int (brakaf[at]who[dot]int)
Dr Ticha Johnson; Tel: +234 816 347 5205; Email: tichaj [at] who.int (tichaj[at]who[dot]int)
Media contact: 

Ms  Charity Warigon; Tel: +234 810 221 0093; Email: warigonc [at] who.int (warigonc[at]who[dot]int)

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Below:

01 Participants with the IM, Dr. Etsano and Dr Fiona Braka

02 A showcase of adequate documentation during the workshop