Saving Lives with ZEIR for World Immunization Week 2021

To celebrate World Immunization Week 2021, we would like to highlight the work we are doing with PATH through their Better Immunization Data Initiative. As their technical partner since 2016, we have been developing the Zambia Electronic Immunization Register (ZEIR).

ZEIR empowers Zambian public health officials and health care workers to improve vaccination and growth monitoring efforts in facilities, as well as during community outreach.

A centerpiece of ZEIR is the OpenSRP Android application focused on user-centered digitization of childhood immunization tasks. The ZEIR app is used to register children, record immunization and growth data, determine immunization coverage, and track vaccine stock. Since its initial launch in 2017, ZEIR has been used by 2,560 health workers in 306 health facilities in Southern Province to register over 170,000 children and track 1.78 million immunizations.

At the start of 2021, in collaboration with Zambian public health officials and PATH, we updated the ZEIR app to include additional vaccines for children, automatic flagging of children who are fully immunized, and tracking of recurring services, e.g. Vitamin A supplements and de-worming for children in health care workers’ catchment areas. ZEIR was relaunched in Southern Province in April 2021, and is being rolled out by the Ministry of Health in Western Province in May 2021 to 326 additional facilities and 1,566 new users.