- Title
- Lessons learnt from a measles outbreak in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea, June 2014 - March 2015
- Creator
- Kamac, Karoi; Paterson, Beverley; Flint, James
- Relation
- Western Pacific Surveillance and Response Journal Vol. 8, Issue 1
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.5365/wpsar.2016.7.2.013
- Publisher
- World Health Organization, Regional Office for the Western Pacific
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2017
- Description
- Objective: This study examined measles vaccine wastage during an outbreak response in Madang Province of Papua New Guinea from June 2014 to March 2015. Methods: Vaccine wastage was defined as the number of doses received by a health centre minus the total number of doses administered during and returned following the outbreak vaccination campaign. Vaccine data were collected from the Provincial Health Information Office, the Provincial Vaccine Store register and clinic and health centre immunization registers for calculating the vaccine wastage. Interviews were conducted with all 48 health centres involved in the outbreak response using a structured questionnaire to explore the reasons for vaccine wastage. Results: Of the 154 110 doses issued by Madang Province during the outbreak, a total of 85 236 (55%) doses were wasted. The wastage varied by district from 31% to 90%. The total cost of the vaccine wastage was estimated to be 589 810 Kina (US$ 196 604). None of the health centres maintained vaccine stock registers. Most health centres indicated multiple failures in cold chain logistics. Almost 40% of health centres reported incorrectly diluting vaccines. The same percentage of health centres reported using incorrect injection techniques. Discussion: Regular audits of cold chain logistics, staff training and improved processes for recording vaccine administration and wastage will decrease vaccine wastage during vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks and also benefit routine immunization activities.
- Subject
- measles; measles outbreak; vaccination; vaccine wastage; Madang Province, Papua New Guinea
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1399711
- Identifier
- uon:34662
- Identifier
- ISSN:2094-7321
- Rights
- © 2017 The Authors; licensee the World Health Organization. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution IGO License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/legalcode), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In any reproduction of this article there should not be any suggestion that WHO or this article endorse any specific organization, products or services. The use of the WHO logo is not permitted. This notice should be preserved along with the article's original URL.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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