In collaboration with the WHO, UNICEF MENARO office organized a Regional Workshop on the Effective Vaccine Management (EVM) Initiative 2.0 for National Managers and UNCIEF Regional Core Technical Team (R-CTT) Members in the Middle East and North African countries in Rabat, Morocco between September 5 and September 10, 2022.

The primary objective of this regional workshop was to build the capacity of the country EVM managers to undertake and manage their country’s EVM initiative using the 2.0 tool and institutionalize the EVM within the Ministry of Health’s Expanded Program of Immunization-Supply Chain (EPI-SC) program. The workshop also sought to orient R-CTT members to the EVM 2.0 initiative and establish a resource pool on EVM 2.0

During the workshop, participants were trained on EVM 2.0 initiative planning and implementation, country set-up, assignment, and review of questionnaires as well as interpretation of heat maps and scores. Over the course of five days, the attendees were further oriented to facilitate an assessors training on the country EVM assessment framework using the 2.0 tool. R-CTT members were also trained to help regional countries to scale EVM2, develop continuous improvement plans (cIP) and use the cIP tracking tool to monitor the progress of cIP implementation.

As a critical continuous improvement approach to strengthening immunization supply chains, the EVM process assesses supply chain functions, identifies bottlenecks and develop recommendations for improvement. The new mobile-based version of EVM 2.0 was developed based on lessons from planning, executing and evaluating the EVM process and is currently being rolled out across MENA countries.

Furthermore, all countries need to sustainably provide technical assistance in planning, training, preparing, conducting assessments and developing cIP. To effectively scale EVM deployment in the short to long-term, UNICEF has entered into Long-Term Arrangements (LTAs) with in-country and regional supply chain vendors, including academic, private and non-governmental organizations as well as partner institutions, for the provision of EVM-related activities.

As an EVM LTA agency, ISEET delivered the necessary Information and Communications Technology (ICT) technical assistance support for the EVM 2.0 tool during the MENA Regional Workshop for Country Effective Vaccine Management Managers and R-CTT Members. In addition, ISEET provided the following support for the participating country EVM Managers and R-CTT Members:

• Translated training materials, such as questionnaires and presentations, in Arabic
• Onboarding support of country managers from the MoH, WHO and UNICEF for the creation of the country EVM account and set-up
• Review, cleaning and entering of country set-up data into the country EVM page and assigning questionnaires
• Installation of the EVMA 2.0 tool in all participants’ tablets and ensuring individual user EVM account creation with respective username IDs and passwords in coordination with the WHO-HQ EVM 2.0 site ICT expert in charge
• Guide the participants on how to download EVM questionnaires from the server and complete the questions
• Preparation of the field visit assessment plan and group with participants’ names and key details
• Consolidation of EVM data and dashboard and explanation following the field visit data collection from five to seven sites
• Preparation of presentations and data consolidation in the relevant tool
• Other related ICT work required for the training workshop requirements

The expected outcome from the regional training workshop was for Country Managers to receive adequate orientation on the EVM 2.0 tool, create the country EVM assessment framework using EVM 2.0 tool and gain the required knowledge and skills to use the cIP tracking tool for monitoring the progress of implementation of cIP.