10.2  Monitoring EPI indicators

For immunization to be effective in reducing cases of vaccine-preventable diseases and deaths, every child should be fully immunized by the age of one year. A [Sometimes you will see this statistic referred to as ‘fully immunized infant’ (FII).] fully immunized child (FIC) has received all doses of all EPI vaccines, including measles vaccine, before the age of one year. In this section, we show you the two main ways to monitor whether your immunization service has the potential to reduce the target EPI vaccine-preventable diseases. You do this by measuring the:

• immunization coverage rate for each vaccine
• dropout rates from completion of scheduled immunizations.

These are the two main EPI indicators that are used internationally to analyse the performance of EPI programmes.