Ver Angola

Health

Families fear polio campaign to test covid-19 vaccine

Health authorities intend to vaccinate more than five million children against polio, but are facing difficulties because the population thinks they are vaccine tests for covid-19, the Ministry of Health said.

:

Speaking to Lusa, the director of the Ministry of Health's Extended Vaccination Program (PAV), Alda Sousa, said that the population is used to vaccination teams going to their homes and administering drops to children, but that now vaccine is injectable.

"We cannot vaccinate from house to house, because of the injectable vaccine, we have the injectable vaccine for polio and, for some provinces, for measles, so the strategy must be even with fixed posts and some advanced teams", explained.
The director of the PAV regretted that, "unfortunately", some people think that vaccination teams are "testing the covid-19 vaccine", as happened in Zaire province.

"In all the provinces where we pass, there is always a small group of people who say they are afraid, who think it is the vaccine of covid-19", he reinforced.

Alda Sousa stressed that with the experience obtained in the first phase of the vaccination campaign in the southern provinces, the approach to social mobilization has changed.

"We managed to end some refusals, we managed to overcome the problem. It means that, in the past, if we needed five minutes to mobilize someone, now there are times when we have to talk to mothers 15, 20 minutes, until we convince them ", he said.

According to Alda Sousa, in some municipalities the strategy was found to place vaccination teams in the sobas' home (traditional authority).

In the first phase of the campaign, the coverage rate was 76 percent, and for the phase that will end this Saturday, which covers provinces in the north and east of the country, the data are not yet consolidated, but the data already available show that it was less than expected.

"Now we don't have the consolidated data yet, because these days we are vaccinating the rural area and we have communication problems, so we still have little data, but the available data show that we still have to work hard, to see if we can reach the goal. goal ", he stressed.

Alda Sousa said that it was also decided to maintain the vaccination posts after nine days of the campaign for at least a week, so that people can join, taking into account also that the agricultural season interferes with the mobilization of the population.

After the southern, northern and eastern provinces of the country, the campaign will cover the provinces of Luanda, Cuanza Norte and Cuanza Sul next month, the first to register cases of infection with the coronavirus in the country.

"Taking into account the covid-19 pandemic, then we delayed, we preferred to provide all the necessary support for greater security and then we started with the least problematic provinces, because at the time it was Luanda, Cuanza Norte and Cuanza Sul that had registered the first cases of covid- 19 ", stressed Alda Sousa.

"It was at that time that we did the planning and grouped them all in one phase", mobilizing the entire national team for Luanda and the other two provinces, he added.

Although Africa is free of wild poliovirus, children will continue to be vaccinated orally and injectable against this disease, for their immunization and to prevent the virus from reappearing, said the director of the PAV.

In addition to the polio vaccine, measles vaccine is being administered in areas where there are cases, namely Cabinda, and vitamin A.

Permita anúncios no nosso site

×

Parece que está a utilizar um bloqueador de anúncios
Utilizamos a publicidade para podermos oferecer-lhe notícias diariamente.