Deciding Which District Gets the Nets First
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Adding a Vaccine to the Schedule
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Show notes
Adding a Vaccine to the Schedule
A childhood vaccination schedule looks fixed, but every line on it was once a decision. Kwabena follows the addition of one vaccine from the advisory committee to a community health worker's cooler box.
- The technical advisory group and the evidence it reviews
- Cost per dose, donor co-financing and what happens when support ends
- Cold chain: fridges, power cuts and the map of where a vaccine can safely go
- Training 4,000 health workers in six weeks
- A community health worker on the first month, the questions and the refusals
Kwabena's references for this episode are listed on the Witspeak page.
Transcript
Welcome back to The Clinic and the Ministry, I am Dr Kwabena Osei-Bonsu. If you look at a child's vaccination card, the schedule seems like it has always existed. It has not. Every line was once a debate, a cost calculation and a logistics plan. Today we follow one vaccine from the moment a technical advisory group reviewed the evidence to the moment a community health worker opened her cooler box on the first morning. In between are questions about the cost per dose, what happens when donor co-financing ends, whether the fridges in a district can hold the new stock through a power cut, and how you train 4,000 health workers in six weeks. The health worker who gave the first doses tells us what families asked. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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