Vaccination: Some Provinces Failed To Comply With Even the Minimum Application Goal
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">It is the commitment through a program to reduce population exposure to the various factors that endanger health. La Rioja and Corrientes, for example, had a 0% compliance of planned targets. AGN says it is not known whether the vaccine had an effective and acceptable expiration date.</span></p> <div> </div>
The Essential Functions and Public Health Program’s (FESP, for its acronym in Spanish) aims to ensure universal coverage of a set of core health programs. Among these activities are the various vaccination campaigns. In this regard, the General Audit Office (AGN, for its acronym in Spanish) observed low levels of compliance with the proposed goals and inadequate controls.
The FESP received external funding of about $220,000,000 dollars from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (BIRF, for its acronym in Spanish), to be disbursed between 2007 and 2011. Its main goal is based on "reducing population exposure to the main risk factors associated with health, improve the regulatory environment, and increasing the coverage of health priority programs (including vaccination campaigns, BCG, SABIN, DTP , Hepatitis B, etc.. controlling Chagas Dengue control, Tuberculosis control, "Safe Blood," "HIV", "sexual Health, Responsible Parenthood", etc)".
To meet these objectives, each of the 20 provinces adhered to the program signed a "commitment to annual management", in which the actions, targets, and relevant indicators are detailed. Through this tool, the agreed tasks can be monitored.
The report approved last year on data for the period 2007-2009, said Neuquén and Buenos Aires were the two provinces with the lowest level of overall compliance (15%). In addition, the audit found that there was a group of seven territories with values between 15 and 32%. The best performers were San Luis which had 53% and 50% in Mendoza, which shows that even the highest percentage achieved, failed to meet half of the goal.
The federal watchdog also analyzed the commitment of the provinces to vaccinate children between 6 and 11 (SABIN, and Hepatitis B viral Triple, etc.). Examination shows that Corrientes and La Rioja did not reach the goals set for any of the three years analyzed; the level of compliance was "0%". There were also nine jurisdictions "with less than 40% compliance: Buenos Aires (33%), Catamarca (20%), Chubut (33%), Entre Ríos (13%), Formosa (20%), Jujuy (27%), Neuquén (13%), Río Negro (20%), and Santiago del Estero (27%).
To carry out the campaigns vaccines were purchased with funds from the program for about 55 million dollars to the Pan American Health Organization (OPS, for its acronym in Spanish). In connection with the purchase, AGN said "it cannot say whether when the vaccines were distributed among the provinces, they had an acceptable expiration date." This is because "the program did not provide enough information that should have made the monitoring and control of procurement financed with the loan."
The report also argues that the audit did not receive "the lot numbers of each vaccine with their respective expiration dates, dates of embarkation, and arrival in the country."
Controls for Vaccination Campaigns
According to the federal watchdog, "the audit protocols implemented by the program to assess compliance with the Public Health Activities were insufficient to record and control the vaccines applied." Furthermore, there is no single nationwide registry that contains all the immunization data.
In addition, the Audit added that "at no point were efforts made to plan a system that allows quarterly or annual results for the 'Public Health Activities' of each province.
