Selected transformative investment: Invest in vaccinators and district managers by regularly and systematically building their capacity, strengthening their performance and providing supportive supervision.

Well-coordinated and proper functioning of district and health facilities at the lower levels of the health delivery system is key to strengthening and improving routine immunization services and the health system in general. I selected invest in vaccinators and district managers by regularly and systematically building their capacity, strengthening their performance and providing supportive supervision as my choice of transformative investment due to this reason. Service delivery and implementation of all activities are done at the district, health facility and community level mostly by these lower level staff (district and vaccinators at health facilities). It is therefore important that their capacity is adequately built to be able to adequately plan, implement and monitor immunization programmes to strengthen their performance.

Prioritization
Initial strategies

1. Ensure ongoing refresher and in-service training and performance improvement of vaccinators and peripheral managers and supervisors
2. Promote staff motivation
3. Track capacity building and ongoing training needs of staff
4. Develop and disseminate up-to-date pre-training immunization training packages
5. Establish a culture, process and budget for supportive supervision and mentorship throughout the programme
6. Train supervisors in supervisory skills
7. Use remote and individual learning
8. Develop training materials using adult learning principles
9. Establish a network of mentoring

Selected strategies from nine (9) initial strategies:

1. Ensure ongoing refresher and in-service training and performance improvement of vaccinators and peripheral managers and supervisors.

Vaccinators, peripheral managers and supervisors skills and knowledge needs to be continuously developed to meet current standards. Staff need to be abreast with new innovations, technological advancement particularly how to access quality and timely data facilitated by new technologies and standard operation procedures developed to improve the immunization system.

2. Develop and disseminate up-to-date pre-training immunization training packages.

In order to successfully implement in-service training of vaccinators and peripheral managers and supervisors, there is the need to develop up-to-date and appropriate training materials. These materials should contain the latest curriculum and all standard operating procedures of the immunization programme.

3. Establish a culture, process and budget for supportive supervision and mentorship.

Supportive supervision provides the opportunity for managers of the health system to observe and provide the needed on the job training to staff involved in the immunization programme. It is therefore very important for every immunization system to adequately budge and institutionalize supportive supervision and mentorship.