Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) in collaboration with WHO, UNICEF and ICDDR,B organised a 3-days Planning Workshop on IMCI Pre-service Training from 29 June to 1 July, 2003 at the conference room of ICDDR,B, MOhakhali, Dhaka.

From 27-31 October 2003 WHO Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development (CAH) conducted a technical briefing at WHO headquarters in Geneva, where 29 participants from 17 countries were present. Dr. Rabeya Khatun from WHO Bangladesh attended the briefing.

A special session on Integrated Management of Childhood Illness was organised by WHO on 7 December 2003, with the participation of paediatricians from different medical colleges, officials related to child health and other health officials. Dr. Hans Troedsson, Director CAH, WHO/HQ presented a paper in the special session.

GoB and WHO joined hands in organising the Partnership Meeting on Sealing up of IMCI and Child Health Intervention on 10 December 2003 at Sasakwa Auditorium, ICCDR,B Bangladesh has successfully piloted IMCI in some upazilas and has been selected as one of the sites for the WHO study, The Multi-Country Evaluation (MCE) of IMCT. The MCE of IMCI is to ascertain the effectiveness, cost and impact of the IMCI strategy in 5 participating countries namely Bangladesh, Tanzania, Uganda, Peru and Brazil. Each year, investigators from the 5 study sites countries meet with the MCE technical advisors in one of the study sites. This year, for the first time , the meeting was held in Bangladesh from 8-12 December, 2003.

The important meeting was amied at providing the optimal environment to promote the rapid results into broad support for evidence-based implementation of key child survival interventions.

A special session on IMCI was held during the 10th Asian Conference on Diarrhoeal Diseases and Nutrition.

The first round of 12th NIDs will be held on 18th January 2004 throughout Bangladesh. The preparations are going on to cover each and every child 0-59 months old with two drops of oral polio vaccine (OPV) in both rounds of the NIDs, The 2nd round will be held on 29th February, on which day all children 12-59 months of age will also get a high potency vitamin A capsule. Both the rounds will be followed by a 4 days house to house campaign to detect and vaccinate the children left out from vaccination at the fixed sites.

Meanwhile the preparations are going on in full swing in both urban and rural areas of Bangladesh. Orientation and planning meetings in connection with the NIDs are being held at all levels, in which the importance of attaining highest quality of coverage to prevent importation of wild poliovirus is being underlined. Although coverage to prevent importation of wild poliovirus is being underliend. Although Bangladesh does not have cases of wild poliovirus since August 2000, it is at a very high risk of importation due to the presence of a very porous border between the two countries, India has come obtained a remarkable progress in polio eradicationl number of cases has come down from 1600 in 2002 to 214 in 2003, but there are still cases in Indian states of west Bengal, Bihar and Assam, Moreover, some states of India (Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Andhra, Assam) previously free from poliomylitis for 3-4 years have fresh cases, thought to be caused by importation from UP and Bihar. This is a cause of real concern for Bangladesh and gives added emphasis to the 12th NIDs.