Ministry of Health has launched the Electronic Immunisation Registry (EIR).
Speaking at the launching ceremony, Minister of Health Ahmed Naseem said the digitalisation of the Maldivian health sector is one of the key strategic priority areas of the government and that enabling a secure, digital mechanism to record vaccinations of children from birth, will enable successive longitudinal tracking of the vaccination status of the Maldivian population.
Additionally, Minister Naseem said the EIR will assist health care workers and providers and the national immunisation programme to monitor the national immunisation coverage easily, and identify children at risk of not receiving the required complete set of vaccination. He said this will in turn aid the government to implement policies and interventions in a timely manner to further strengthen the implementation of the national immunisation programme.
Furthermore, Minister Naseem expressed hope the EIR will allow parents to monitor the vaccination status of their children and ensure that they are on track, as the system will help in verifying existing vaccination records of children. He added it will alleviate some of the challenges faced both by parents and health care workers and providers when a child’s health record book is misplaced or damaged.
EIR is an electronic registry that provides a single digital platform to access, record, and manage information related to vaccines given to children from any vaccination centre across the country. The registry is hosted on the DHIS2 health data platform, which is used in many countries to collect and analyse various types of health information.
EIR is being implemented in the Maldives with support from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and is expected to strengthen the systemic tracking of children’s vaccinations and provide timely outreach to communities on policies and public health services. The health ministry stated all vaccine-related information related to over 7,000 children has been included in the registry and that information regarding all children in the Maldives will be included by the end of the year.