“In Mexico there is a decrease of up to 70% of the vaccination schedule for children. The main one is Bacillus de Calmette and Guérin (BCG), the vaccine against tuberculosis. Others are the Triple Viral (which works against measles, mumps or mumps and rubella), Rotavirus and Influenza at the time”, denounced medical specialists from the Medical Impact organization.
Dedicated to humanitarian medical care, the Dr Giorgio Alberto Franyuti Kelly, shares: “During these years it has been wonderful to be able to serve medicine, caring for the people who most need it in the most remote places on the planet; I have been able to see the tragedies in natural disasters, in armed conflicts, but a tragedy that is enormous and monstrous is that preventable diseases take the lives of children who could have had a bright future.”
The fact that the government did not want to invest 100, 200 or 800 pesos for a dose of vaccine cost the life of a child. The also general director of said organization said that they have been able to witness tragedies in recent days, such as in Chiapas, where the BCG vaccine for tuberculosis continues to wreak havoc. “It is the story of María, a four-year-old girl suffering from severe malnutrition, where despite the fact that her parents went to the health center, they did not find a BCG vaccine and the time was not enough, it was too late, the tuberculosis went to her brain and He killed her (…) Seeing that the children are infected with tuberculosis makes me helpless. This is the infectious disease that kills more people in the world, already dethroning Covid-19 even from last year.”
Although vaccination increased 1,300% this year, it was targeted only for one disease, in this case Covid-19, this somehow also encourages people to go or agree to get other vaccines, however, if there are none, this does not work no problem.
Dr. Giorgio Alberto Franyuti Kelly. Photo EE: Special
“Just last week, in Ajalpan, Puebla, we had an impressive situation, we had never run out of basic scheme vaccines in a single day. We also did not have enough vaccination records to hand out, this is a tragedy because many children in those communities are now exposed to rotavirus, polio, measles and many other public health monsters that can wake up because all the public effort was dedicated to a single disease ”.
He said that today a large part of the population under five years of age is at exceptional risk; for example, vaccination for tuberculosis decreased from 80% supply to 21%, “since 2019 the vaccines that are in the basic vaccination table have received blow after blow. We are talking about the fact that 4 out of 5 children in the country living in extreme poverty did not receive their immunization, this is going back 50 to 70 years in the past”.
To do?
According to the specialist, although there has been a real shortage of raw material for the production of vaccines worldwide, this has not been as strong, it is more an issue of investment funds and regulation, since Mexico is also a country in development, for example, is attached to the PAHO Strategic Fund “but has not been able to take advantage of it.” The important call then is for two entities, the Executive branch to look for the acquisition routes, and the Legislative branch, specifically the Lower House, which are the ones who approve the budgets and allocate the money to have vaccines. “Birmex for example, it has the capacity, with a high level of specialization, but its hands are tied, regulatory and action pathways must also be opened”
Also, there is a need for the State to adopt a nominal vaccination registry, an initiative that would help teamwork, reporting in the same place, so as not to compete for the districts to be vaccinated, nor to duplicate efforts and resources. Another pending issue is the electronic vaccination card, so as not to deny protection to those who need it most and to make data use more efficient.
The Dr Franyuti Kelly assures that Mexico has the tools and human capital to solve this, “we must work as a team, together with NGOs, the private sector, parents, teachers, society itself, all speaking and promoting the benefits of vaccination.”
An investment, not an expense
The doctor. Juan Alberto Garcia Ortiz, director of government relations for Medical Impact, reaffirms the message. “Vaccines save lives”, it prevents us from consequences, in measles it could be blindness, for example, and all this represents an expense for health institutions and for the pockets of Mexican families.
According to world organizations, one dollar spent on vaccination represents 16 dollars saved on treatment and follow-up of these patients, to this we add that these people will not be able to be productive in the future, which represents an even greater expense. “That’s why it’s a national security measure.”
Dr. Juan Alberto García Ortiz, director of government relations for Medical Impact. Photo EE: Special
In 2020 there was an outbreak of measles in which 70% of the people who fell ill were not vaccinated, they are up to three times more likely to contract the disease and it could begin to replicate more consistently for other diseases.
He said that it is important to note that the diseases that are preventable by vaccination still exist, if we do not see them, it is thanks to the vaccination that has been implemented. “There is no safer and more efficient measure to protect our children than vaccination.”
In this coincides the Dr Franyuti Kelly, “our priority should always be our children (…) The United Nations refers to this in the Universal Health Coverage Declaration, the last go first and no one is left behind, government plans are not only for big cities. Because of these bad investments in the future, diseases such as polio will return. I don’t know how these people, after an intense disability, are going to be able to be economically active. It will cost us so much not to have invested in prevention.”
Dangerous setback: Unicef
Just last week, the Unicef warned of the decrease in the percentage of vaccinated children, qualifying it as a “dangerous setback” because it puts the health of minors at risk, who can suffer lifelong consequences. In addition, the decrease in vaccination also facilitates the spread of diseases such as measles, whose virus is highly contagious.
Data of United Nations indicate that while in 2013 there were almost 500 cases of measles, in 2019 the figure rose to more than 23,000. The same happens with diphtheria, which went from five cases, in 2013, to almost 900 in 2019.
“As countries recover from the pandemic, immediate action is needed to prevent coverage rates from falling further, because the potential re-emergence of disease outbreaks also poses a serious risk to all of society,” Gough said.
Unicef affirms that the drop in coverage by 14 percentage points in the last five years affects almost 2.5 million children, who have not received the three doses of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough. Of them, 1.5 million have not even received the first dose of that vaccine.
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