In Argentina, more than 1 million children between 0 and 11 years old or did not receive any of the free and compulsory vaccinations included in the National Vaccination Calendar or did not complete any of the schemes in terms of the number of doses. This was reported by the Argentine Society of Pediatrics (SAP), based on the most recent records, corresponding to the year 2021.
The communication was formulated within the framework of Vaccination Week in the Americas, an initiative of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) that, under the call to action “Catch up. #EveryVaccineCounts“, from April 22 to 29 carries out the 21st Vaccination Week in the Americas (VWA) and the 12th World Immunization Week, together with the countries and territories of the region. The number of children and adolescents who have an incomplete immunization schedule in Argentina arises from the 2nd Special Report of the Observatory for Children and Adolescents on Vaccination corresponding to the year 2021, which was prepared by SAP and UNICEF from data from the Nation’s Directorate for the Control of Immunopreventable Diseases.
“Complete vaccination is a fundamental tool to achieve robust immunity capable of preventing potentially very serious infections in children and adolescents,” said the Dr. Elizabeth Patricia Bogdanowiczpediatric infectious disease physician and member of the Infectious Diseases Committee of the Argentine Society of Pediatrics.
“The routine immunization allows establishing contact with the health care system at the beginning of life and offers all children the possibility of having a healthy life from the beginning and until an advanced age”, warned from the SAP.
Slight recovery of vaccination coverage
The study also found that in 2021 there was a slight recovery in vaccination coverage in all age groups compared to 2020, which was the main year of the covid-19 pandemicbut also concluded that this improvement did not reach pre-pandemic levels.
In a breakdown by age, the report details that in 2021 at least 100,000 children under one year of age did not complete the vaccination scheme against the following diseases: whooping cough (whooping cough), Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type B), diphtheria, tetanus, hepatitis B and poliomyelitis; while at least 73,000 one-year-olds received no protection against hepatitis A, measles, rubella, and mumps; and 118,000 did not have full protection against pneumococcus.
More than 1 million children between 0 and 11 years old did not receive at least one vaccine in Argentina
On the other hand, at least 10,000 infants between 15 and 18 months did not receive protection against chickenpox and 136,000 did not get the whooping cough, Hib, diphtheria, tetanus and hepatitis B booster.
In the five-year-old group, 150,000 did not receive full protection against measles, rubella, and mumps; while 122,000 did not have the whooping cough, tetanus and diphtheria booster. Finally, 186,000 11-year-old adolescents did not receive the whooping cough, tetanus, and diphtheria booster; and, in this same age group, 184,000 women and 217,000 men did not have the second dose of the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine. In total, more than 1 million children in Argentina in 2021 lacked at least one vaccine or one dose of the required schedule..
The importance of routine vaccination
Therefore, taking into account the number of children and adolescents who have an incomplete immunization schedule in the country, the Dra. Gabriela Tapponnier, a pediatric infectologist and secretary of the SAP Infectious Diseases Committee, warned about the importance of routine vaccination: “it is essential to protect individual health and, also, from a community point of view, to avoid the appearance of outbreaks of diseases that were under control or even considered eradicated”. The routine vaccinations are those that are recommended for all people, according to age, stage of life and vaccination history, defines PAHO, adding that there is routine vaccination for children, adolescents, pregnant women, adults and the elderly.
The report made by the SAP and UNICEF showed levels of coverage that were insufficient to achieve collective immunity, also called the “herd effect”, which can result in a greater circulation of pathogens such as viruses and bacteria, thus increasing the number of carriers and the incidence of diseases.
“Vaccination is one of the health interventions with the greatest impact and effectiveness, since it saves millions of lives in the world every year,” said the Dra. Andrea Uboldipediatric infectologist and member of the Infectious Diseases Committee of the SAP.
Among the figures related to the lack of vaccination coverage, the SAP and UNICEF particularly expressed their great concern about the more than 100,000 infants who were left unprotected with the incomplete primary schedule during 2021, and also pointed out that the coverage in infants and infants of one year they did not achieve the necessary goal to ensure individual and collective protection.
Vaccines protect individual health, save lives, and prevent controlled diseases from reappearing.
Verify immunization schedules
The specialists from both institutions emphatically agreed in recommending that the population go to the medical consultation with the pediatrician in order to check immunization schedules of minors and, in cases where a vaccine is missing, proceed to complete the immunization.
Las Vaccines from the National Calendar are mandatory, free and are applied in official vaccinationshealth centers and public hospitals in the country, and this includes vaccines for all stages of life, special situations or for specific groups.
“It is also the responsibility of adults to know and consult the National Vaccination Calendar to know with certainty which are the free and compulsory vaccines for each age in the course of childhood and adolescence,” said the Dr. Miriam Calvary, also an infectologist at the Argentine Society of Pediatrics.
Another point that SAP and UNICEF highlighted in their report was the high dropout rate which has the second dose of the HPV vaccine nationwide, which is applied to 11-year-old adolescents. “The coverage for the first dose against HPV shows an adequate similarity with the acellular triple bacterial vaccine. However, the high dropout rate of the second dose at the national level is evident,” they warned.
In the Americas region, the OPS carries out the Expanded Immunization Program (PAI) with the aim of eliminating and controlling diseases preventable by vaccination, such as poliomyelitis, rubella, congenital rubella syndrome, measles and neonatal tetanus.
