The campaign, sponsored by the World Health Organization as part of its polio eradication efforts, vaccinated 500,000 children, aged 4 – 59 months, over a one-week period in early 2019. Data on acceptability of the PharmaJet Tropis Needle-Free Injection System was collected from 610 vaccinators and 4,898 caregivers. Of those with prior needle and syringe experience, both vaccinators (97.6%) and caregivers (99.6%) expressed a strong preference for the Tropis system, citing ease and speed of use, appearance, and children’s response to the vaccination (less crying/discomfort). Among caregivers, 94.7% said they would be more likely to bring their child for vaccination in a future campaign that used jet injectors. Importantly, average vaccine coverage among towns administering fIPV was 98.7%, which was an increase of 18.4% over the preceding campaign for those areas.
The paper, entitled Needle-free injectors for mass administration of fractional dose inactivated poliovirus vaccine in Karachi, Pakistan: A survey of caregiver and vaccinator acceptability (Daly et al, 2020), was published in Vaccine on January 23, 2020.