The Minister of Health, Nísia Trindade, reaffirmed this Friday (12), in Rio de Janeiro, the importance of flu vaccination in all age groups, and not just in priority groups, due to the increase in cases of Influenza in the country.
“This increases in the winter period that we are entering and the possibility of vaccination means protection, also because, in some cases, we have complications due to the flu. Therefore, we recommend vaccination from six months of age”, said the minister, after participating in the inauguration of the president of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Mario Moreira.
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The flu vaccine has already reached 30% coverage in the country, but Nísia admitted that vaccination is falling short of what is needed, despite the efforts of the Ministry of Health and the Health Secretariats, in particular the municipal secretariats, “because it is in the attention basis that the vaccine is applied”.
To increase the immunization rate, she said that joint work between government and society is necessary. “We are working together with each municipal manager, we are involving community health agents and we are going to carry out actions in loco, mainly in municipalities that have low coverage, to try to expand it”.
“We are studying how to improve this (vaccination). We already have several actions underway, mainly the active search of the population, so that they can be vaccinated, ”she said.
Immunization against the flu began in April, in the North Region, but it is necessary to intensify it, said Nísia Trindade.
Regarding indigenous vaccination coverage, which reached around 16%, with emphasis on the Yanomami population, where cases of flu syndrome are already twice as high as last year, with cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) almost reaching the level of 2022, the minister clarified that a specific vaccination was carried out for indigenous peoples, a multivaccination. “A lot of concern is also not only about the vaccine against covid-19, but vaccines for the so-called childhood diseases, with an increase in measles cases and concern about polio”. According to the minister, the campaign was intensified and will continue.
NIBP
The National Immunization Program completes 50 years this year. “It’s been 50 very successful years and, especially in the last four years, of great concern, because we lost the fight for vaccine coverage, which was already a more than normalized part. I mean, it wasn’t a problem. All families took their children to be vaccinated against polio, against measles, against rubella. This was already a practice that did not come out of nowhere”.
She recalled that thanks to immunization campaigns, Brazil managed to eradicate smallpox. “This means that there is no circulation of the virus in any region of the country”.
He also said that in the 1970s success was also achieved in relation to meningitis, polio, which had been eliminated from the Americas region and which, unfortunately, has returned”.
According to the minister, these are alerts for a national movement involving all levels of government and society, with the aim of recovering this coverage. “This is the process we are in. We know that the reversal will not be quick, because there was a lot of campaign against the vaccine and, also, a lot of change in society. Diseases that are no longer a threat do not generate the view that people need to protect themselves. That is why I said that there cannot be a passive attitude. We are putting together many strategies, active search, involving schools, popular festivals, actions in all areas of government. We do not make the vaccine a health-only event”.
Nísia Trindade said that there are studies that explain the low vaccination coverage. And one of the reasons for this, according to her, is fake news, or lying news, “a fundamental factor to be fought”.
This lying news is criminal, in the minister’s assessment, and often “propagated by doctors who violate the code of ethics, talking about deaths from vaccines, claiming research that has no basis”.
Health is one of the cases that must be seen with great attention in the Fake News Bill, he warned.
The minister defended the need to expand the offer of times and places for vaccination and to face the issue as a problem that has formed and not as a routine problem. For the minister, community health agents play a fundamental role in this process, going to families, to homes.
“It will have to be a great national mobilization” to expand vaccination coverage in Brazil, said Nísia Trindade.
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