The recent monsoon floods in Pakistan have had a severe impact on the lives of 33 million people and elevated the risk of a public health disaster. According to the National Disaster Management Authority, 2,000 health facilities, or 10 per cent of all facilities in the country, have been either damaged or destroyed. The World Health Organization (WHO) is delivering health services to the displaced, and UN Volunteers are on the WHO team.
Over eight million people in Pakistan flood-affected districts are in urgent need of health assistance and the risk of disease outbreaks is particularly high. National UN Volunteers with WHO are helping the response efforts, like Muhammad Umair, Data Entry Operator, and Andleeb Afzal, Monitoring and Data Support Assistant.
Serving within the WHO expanded programme on immunization, Andleeb is involved in the comprehensive review of immunization coverage at provincial level in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Her role is to identify the gaps and bottlenecks compromising immunization efforts.
My desire to improve the health of those affected by the floods motivated me to become a UN Volunteer, so that I can give back to my community and make a difference in someone's life. Volunteering in a dynamic and challenging setting allows me to understand health issues, enduring challenges and strategies to overcome them, hence enhancing my social skills and mounting professional experience. --Andleeb Afzal, UN Volunteer Monitoring and Data Support Assistant with WHO, Pakistan
Dr Unaiza Hadi, National Professional Officer with WHO, works closely with Andleeb, who she supervises.
UN Volunteers like Andleeb play a vital role in promoting the immunization agenda in Pakistan. She is contributing to improving data compilation and analysis and, with her good social skills, she can easily communicate very well with social workers. --Dr Unaiza Hadi, National Professional Officer with WHO, Pakistan
With a passion for tackling development challenges, Muhammad Umair joined WHO in October 2022. As a Data Entry Operator, his responsibilities include handling surveillance and providing feedback on vaccination coverage in Islamabad district. Together with five members of his team, they investigate reported disease outbreak cases and work to contain these.
Muhammad shares, "I help the doctors in each health facility to know importance of the vaccine preventable disease surveillance. I also help my organization to make decisions to deal with and control the disease, based on analysis and review of data that we get from the field."
Muhammad’s presentation and data analysis skills help WHO get real time updates from the field. Dr Farah Naz, WHO Technical Officer and supervisor of Muhammad, applauds his exceptional skills.
Muhammad contributes to improving routine immunization status and the vaccine preventable diseases forum. We were able to complete the feedback loop for each disease due to his tremendous support. --Dr Farah Naz, WHO Technical Officer, Pakistan
