My name is Peter John Kisma, I am a polio campaign supervisor. I started doing this work in 2008 in Munuki Payam as a vaccinator. In 2009 I became a team leader and later a Boma supervisor. As a Boma supervisor I monitor the work of my teams at the payam level. When I was a team leader, I monitored and ensured that the teams assigned under my supervision were vaccinating all children in the Boma where we were allocated.

Today I am a payam supervisor, charged with news roles and responsibilities. I support the trainers in mobilizing vaccinators for training and participate in the training of teams to ensure they understand every detail concerning the vaccination and campaign exercise. I understand the population size in my payam. Before the returnees arrived, I had over 34 000 children in my payam alone. In addition to the training I work closely with the health facility staff to ensure that all vaccines are well prepared for the teams.

My typical day starts at 6.00 a.m. I wake up, take a quick shower and dash to the health facility way before the vaccinators arrive to work with the cold assistant to ensure that the vaccines are ready for the field teams. I retire at about 9.00 a.m during the campaign period. Although my payam is big, I move with a motorcycle hired by the county health department to supervise the teams. I prefer a motor bicycle to a car because there are some roads that vehicles cannot pass through either because they are flooded and or are too narrow. The motorbike can easily pass through. After work we meet as a team to review the day and discuss challenges. It’s at this point that we also tally all the children vaccinated during the exercise. We have a total of 80 teams, initially they were 65 teams, but after sharing our challenges with WHO and UNICEF, they added 15 more teams for us to make 80. South Sudan Red Cross has also been very helpful during the campaigns by providing volunteers and mega phones used for social mobilization.

I love this job because I am able to save many children in my payam and country from getting polio. My participation counts. However, there is no work without challenges. Sometimes we face logistical challenges where supplies delay and transport, especially for people who work in distant places in the payam, is delayed. Given our weather, it gets really hot during the day, all the same we move but the heat sometimes slows down the work.

That said, we shall work for our people to ensure that we eradicate polio completely from from South Sudan.