NRDF - National Research & Development Foundation, Peshawar

Location:

Seventeen Districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 6 Tribal Agencies of FATA

Objectives:

•  To map well renowned Ulama in the target districts/Agencies
•  To constitute District/Agency wise core groups to play a leadership role in improving accessibility & coverage of Vaccination campaigns,
•  To involve Ulama in addressing refusals and sustaining same in future
•  To Utilize services of Ulama to effectively communicate PEI/EPI related messages to local communities through Sermons

Activities:

•  Sensitization Meetings with Ulama
•  District and Agency Congregations
•  Provincial Congregations
•  Monthly Media Briefings
•  Mass Meetings
•  Documenting and Disseminating Success Stories
•  Sermons of Ulama in Support of Polio Vaccination and immunization
•  Facilitation of Polio and immunization Campaigns in Local Communities
•  Networking with Stakeholder
•  Development of Awareness Aids

Outputs:

•  Mapping exercise was conducted and identified 2154 Ulama in 22 selected districts and agencies of Khyber Pakhtunkhawa and FATA for involving in the project activities.
•  The Provincial and Districts Core Group of Ulama hold individual consultation meetings with 6078 mapped Ulama and won their support for Polio vaccination and immunization of children in target area.
•  Constituted District Core Group in each of the selected district and agency and total 154 Ulama were taken on board in selected places where opposition to polio vaccination was common.
•  Organized 29 congregations of Ulama at district/agency level in which 2814 Ulama participated and endorsed their support for vaccination and immunization.
•  Organized a grand congregation of Ulama at provincial level in which more than 800 Ulama of province and FATA participated.
•  Forty Ulama from the target area was awarded with shields in recognition of their outstanding contribution to EPI/PEI activities.
•  130 media briefings were organized on the district/agency and provincial level to disseminate EPI/PEI messages to general public.
•  1500 wall clocks containing key messages of EPI/PEI were distributed among the mapped Ulama.
•  Over 30,000 refusals were covered during the short span of one year. This include 8453 chronic religious refusals directly covered by field staff of the project.
•  A small scale monitoring has confirmed that 3154 Ulama of KPK and FATA has included the key EPI/PEI messages in their sermons. The estimated direct audience of these sermons is calculated to be over 800,000 individuals.
•  Regularly published a quarterly newsletter “Salam” and shared its copies with all the mapped Ulama and other partner organizations.

Project Period:

November 2009 till date

Collaboration:

Directorate of Health Services, Government Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Directorate of Health Services FATA, UNICEF and WHO Peshawar, Pakistan.