Sefwi Akontombra District is one of the districts in the Western Region part of Ghana. The main challenge facing the Directorate have been her ability to meet immunisation targets for the past recent years.

Many strategies including mob ups over the years have been adopted to complement the routine EPI schedule outlined int he national EPI guidelines.

Recent data review meeting held in August, 2018 suggested that, these children alhtough claimed not be int the communities are actually available in their numbers and sometimes seen at the facilities with their mothers when sick.

The missing link identified was the Community Health Nurses not reviewing data to identify children who missed the sessions but avaialble int he communities, no synergy between the clinicians and the community health nurses when these children visit the facilities for other immunisation services and no data review meetings.

These phenomena continue to be the biggest threats and pose high risksof these children not receiving the vaccinations. 

These together with other already known factors cumulatively leave the district at low performing rates ranging from 75.6% in 2016, 73% in 2017 and 80% in 2018 against national target of 90% using Penta 3 as Proxy.
However, there exist strong leadership at the Directorate that compose of the disease control officers, Health Information Officer, Surveillance officer and the District Director to provide technical and managerial guidelines to achieving full coverages

Another strength is the avaialbity of trained community health nurses, Community based surveillance volunteers in the communities, clinicians that provide health care to sick including children, spread of health facilities i.e CHPS to all subdistricts, poor transport system etc

The major weaknesses are inadequate monitoring of CHNs, infrequent data review meetings to identify missed children and clinicians not referring sick children to Community Health Nurses for possible immunisations.

The largest opportunities that exist are the community health nurses, registers the CHNs use that can easily determine children not immunised and the community based surveillance volunteers that have adequate knowledge ont he location of every community members that can help trace all these children for immunisation.

The biggest risks are the long distance to outreach points and inadequate health education of mothers or care givers on the need to get the children fully immunised with the notion that, once the child has been immunised once he or she is protected.

The Drirectorate therefore develops strategies to include sensitization during community durbars,training and data reveiew meeting with facility staff quarterly and effective monitoring and support visits to subdistricts.

Week 2 assignment_SWOT analysis