Introductory meeting of COVID-19 vaccine post-introduction evaluation (cPIE) has been organized by the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the National Center for Communicable Diseases (NCCD). Mr D. Bayarbold, Director of Public Health Department, MoH, Dr Ts.Bilegtsaikhan, General Director of NCCD and Mrs Monica Fong, WHO Acting Representative to Mongolia and other delegates participated in the online and in-person hybrid meeting. During the meeting, the best practices of cPIE in Philippines were shared by Mrs Glenda Gonzales, Consultant at WHO WPRO. The meeting participants discussed preparatory details of the evaluation including cPIE objectives, expected results, methodology, selection of target provinces and districts, data collection and analysis and reporting.
WHO is participating as partnering organization for cPIE in Mongolia providing technical and financial support, and number of experts from WHO WPRO and US CDC are coming to Mongolia to assist in the evaluation. Other organizations including National Center for Public Health, UNICEF Mongolia and health facilities will participate in cPIE in Mongolia as well.
The WHO recommends all countries which have introduced a new vaccine to conduct a Post-Introduction Evaluation (PIE) to measure the impact on their vaccination system. The review is normally carried out 6-18 months after initial COVID-19 vaccine introduction. cPIE will allow problems associated with the introduction of the vaccine to be identified early enough to be corrected and documented, so that they can be prevented in future introductions of new vaccines and shared with other countries to prevent similar problems, and also to indicate the ease or complexity of the vaccine introduction.