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Health Minister appeals to parents to get children fully vaccinated
Kaieteur News – With efforts being made to get the education system back to some level of normalcy, Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, is encouraging parents and guardians to get their children fully vaccinated.
The Minister’s appeal was voiced during his daily COVID-19 update yesterday even as he revealed that vaccination for children “are lagging behind in terms of second dose.”
As was previously reported, the government in August last had commenced the rollout of its vaccination programme among the adolescent population. The country, back then had received about 146,250 doses of the US-made Pfizer vaccine for children between the ages of 12 and 18 years.
According to Dr. Anthony, “The important thing here is that I think everybody would like to see schools reopen; I think everybody would like some sort of normalcy with the education system. But if we have a large unvaccinated children population, then it’s going to be problematic and therefore, the faster we vaccinate children, the better it is going to be for the education system to return to that level of normalcy.”
The Minister shared that to date there are approximately 26,554 individuals between the ages of 12 and 18 who have received their first dose, and there are about 16,802 individuals in that age cohort who have received their second dose. He noted that there is still a lot of work to be done to ensure that children are vaccinated since there are an estimated 104,000 children in the country.
For children who are not in school, Dr. Anthony said that his Ministry is using the Bureau of Statistics’ numbers to target them. Additionally, he said that health teams will be going into the various communities, Regions and villages in order to reach more persons so that they can come out and get vaccinated.
He stressed that the importance of being vaccinated is that it helps in reducing the number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths recorded in the country. “In countries that have had high uptake of vaccination, we have seen that it has made a difference. There is a deduction in cases, hospitalisation and deaths. Using that as a proxy, we know that once we have higher numbers in this age category that it will certainly help to reduce hospitalisation and infections,” the Minister pointed out.
To this end, he is encouraging parents not only to be vaccinated but to ensure that their children are as well.
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