BAGUIO CITY – In line with the preparations for the upcoming Chikiting Ligtas Campaign, a nationwide vaccination drive aimed at catching up on routine immunization among children aged 0-59 months to be held starting May 2023, the Department of Health-Cordillera (DOH-CAR) conducted an Orientation on Synchronized Electronic Immunization Repository (SEIR) around the different provinces and cities in the region.
The SEIR is a database that aims to centralize all records of vaccinated individuals in the country. It will be used during the month-long Chikiting Ligtas Campaign to manage data of children who have received their routine immunization shots for measles and rubella, the bivalent oral polio vaccine, as well as vitamin A supplementation.
Data managers, encoders, and other health practitioners from the different provinces and municipalities in the region participated in the orientation. They were given an overview of this nationwide campaign (also known as MR-bOPV-SIA) and were taught to use the SEIR through lectures and guided hands-on application sessions.
Joycelyn Rillorta, regional coordinator of the National Immunization Program (NIP), along with regional data managers Oswald Patnaan and Juan Carlos Bautista oriented the participants. They emphasized the importance of avoiding inaccurate data, double entries, and backlogs in vaccine data management.
They also were one in encouraging and empowering the participants in the conduct of their duties during the actual vaccination drive. They noted that despite not being directly involved in the immunization process, their role as local data managers/encoders is just as integral to the success of the campaign.
The participants are currently taking part in the National Simultaneous Encoding Week from April 18-20, 2023. This seeks to test the readiness of the SEIR to accept the data that it is expected to receive throughout the duration of the actual campaign.
At the moment, 100% of municipal/city health offices in the region have created SEIR accounts, an indicator of better readiness to receive immunization data for the said campaign. By DOH-CAR
