By Sue-Ann Wayow
THERE has been a decrease in the number of children accessing the mumps, measles and rubella vaccines which was very concerning since it appears to be a resurgence of childhood diseases around the world.
This was stated by Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh on Wednesday while speaking at the ministry’s virtual Covid-19 update.
He said, “We are now down to about 83% and 85%. Herd immunity for that is about 95%.”
Deyalsingh added that it was a trend globally in which parents were “shying away” from childhood immunisation for various reasons one of which being that they were following the advice of anti-vaxxers.
The minister said that entry into primary school has always been the last check and balance and although primary schools have been physically closed, Deyalsingh said the ministry still wanted to prevent an outbreak of mumps, measles and rubella and all other childhood diseases.
These included yellow fever of which the vaccinated rate was down to 85%, he revealed.
The minister said around last year October into November, parents were reached out to individually with requests by health officials to have their children vaccinated.
Deyalsingh said, “But, you are seeing re-emergence of some childhood disease, post-Covid which were not there pre-Covid because of the whole issue surrounding vaccines.”
He said, “I just want to express my fear that these numbers are not good enough. We are appealing to parents of primary-school-age children who are not vaccinated as they would have been to get into schools, even though those primary schools are not as yet opened, let us rally around our children and make sure we don’t expose them to mumps, measles, rubella, yellow fever or polio or any other of the childhood vaccines that we normally give our children freely and without much thinking.”
Deyalsingh admitted that even before the Covid-19 pandemic, it was a bit of a struggle to get the desired number of children vaccinated.
He said when he first became Minister of Health in 2015 and he began to look at vaccination numbers, “were not in a very good place” with a percentage in the eighties and early nineties.
“There have always been anti-vaxxed sentiments and we worked very hard in 2017, 2018, 2019 and we got it up to 94%,95%, 96% which is a good place to be. But since Covid, it has slipped, and I have been telling the population, not to let it slip,” Deyalsingh said.
The vaccinations were conducted with “not one problem,” he added
However, he said, “The current (Covid-19) climate does not make it easy.”
Deyalsingh also mentioned that the “father of anti-vaxxers” British former physician Andrew Wakefield was the one who began the whole anti-vaccination movement with the publication of a 1998 study that falsely claimed a link between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.
There was a meeting planned for Wednesday to discuss new strategies for encouraging vaccination in children.
The minister appealed to parents to make the right decision and act in their children’s best interest and not to follow the conspiracy theorists who argue all the reasons of why someone should not become vaccinated.
