A Journey from Capacity Building to Community Engagement and Beyond
The Boost Community highlights the stories of members committed to immunization work at the national and sub-national levels. The Boost Member Spotlight Series will regularly feature active Boost members who are engaged in relevant and innovative immunization activities in their contexts. If you have a story to share, please contact us at info@boostcommunity.org.
Dr. Md. Mahmudul Hasan Faisal, a professional doctor and registered physician by training, was motivated to move from a clinical setting in a hospital to a public health setting in Bangladesh because “it widened [his] opportunity to serve many people at a time.” With this in mind, he assumed the role of Surveillance and Immunization Medical Officer with the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2019, working with the Essential Programme on Immunization (EPI).
In this position, Dr. Faisal provides technical assistance to medical and government staff and assists with the surveillance of immunization programs and vector-borne diseases. He also aims to increase access to safe immunization for everyone he serves and to guide district health authorities throughout the country. In emergencies, Dr. Faisal is called on for his expertise, especially to advise and support doctors in immunization activities. He helps doctors to orient surveillance on Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES), Neonatal Tetanus (NT), Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP), suspected Measles and Rubella, and Congenital Rubella Syndrome (CRS).
Dr. Faisal often travels extensively throughout Bangladesh, helping to uncover zero-dose and under-vaccinated children through Rapid Community Assessment (RCA) and investigation and containment of any Vaccine Preventable Disease (VPD) outbreak. For example, in 2019 there was a refugee crisis in southern Bangladesh, which contains a large population of approximately one million displaced refugees from Myanmar. As a result, there was a high risk of a cholera outbreak in this region. Dr. Faisal and his team worked to roll out an Oral Cholera Vaccine (OCV) among this group and successfully prevented an outbreak.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Faisal was actively involved in providing technical assistance and training to district authorities for effective micro-planning, roll out and supportive supervision of COVID-19 vaccination and mass campaigns with vaccines such as Pfizer, AstraZeneca, among others, vaccinating the 5 –17 years age group (Pfizer-PF/Comirnaty). His contributions to enhance surveillance and immunization campaigns in emergencies like floods and cyclones and health system strengthening by facility assessment as a part of emergency pandemic response during COVID-19 have been published in the WHO SEARO regional publication NEXTWORK – which is his proudest professional accomplishment to date.
More recently, Dr. Faisal served as the focal person in the first piloting of the Arc GIS-based online EPI yearly micro-planning using satellite imagery with geotagging in Bangladesh with successful implementation in all units of Sirajganj District. Moreover, Dr. Faisal and other health professionals throughout the country are working to introduce the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine and mobilize government authorities on its behalf. This is a behemoth task as Dr. Faisal is working to train vaccinators and healthcare professionals, as well as to monitor the data quality and data reporting. Yet Dr. Faisal’s commitment to serving all people is unwavering.
His work isn’t nearly over, and he hopes to obtain another advanced degree–his dream is a Master of Science and subsequent PhD at an esteemed institution such as Johns Hopkins University or Harvard University.
Dr. Faisal has been a Boost Community member for several years and has most recently taken part in the 2022 COVID-19 Recovery for Routine Immunization Programs Fellowship and the 2023 Advanced Community Activation Training where he and team members worked on a project focused on reducing zero-dose children. Together they registered over 200 people to attend a live webinar entitled, “Leaving No Child Behind: Empowering Opinion Leaders as Immunization Change Makers.” He has also completed the Boosting Leadership to Advance Life Course Immunization training offered by Boost in November 2023.
Dr. Faisal is grateful to Boost for “giving [him] an opportunity to work and to talk with global immunization professionals and also to learn new strategies from them [on] how to provide communication and activate the community.”
Dr. Mahmudul Hasan Faisal
Dr. Md. Mahmudul Hasan Faisal, MBBS, MPH (Epidemiology), is a professional doctor, registered physician and published scientific journal author. He currently serves as Surveillance and Immunization Medical Officer with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Bangladesh, working with the Essential Programme on Immunization (EPI).