Strengthen immunisation efforts

THIS week is World Immunisation Week (April 24-30).
Marked by the World Health Organisation and its partners, it aims to promote the use of vaccines to protect people of all ages against diseases.
Immunisation saves millions of lives every year and is widely recognised as one of the world’s most successful and cost-effective health interventions.
Today, over 13 million children are not receiving any vaccines.
In some cases, conflict is making it hard to deliver vaccines in remote or restricted areas.
In others, parents choose not to vaccinate their children because they are unaware about the risks these diseases present or because misinformation has seeded distrust.
As the world unites against covid-19, we are reminded of how quickly developing and new diseases can spread when there is no immunity against them or a vaccine to prevent them.
However, for many of the world’s most dangerous vaccine-preventable diseases, we are seeing an increase in the number of individuals infected and in the number of deaths worldwide.
Outbreaks of measles, diphtheria, yellow fever and other vaccine-preventable diseases are on the rise in recent years.
Health systems around the world are overstretched and the longer the pandemic continues, the more essential health services such as vaccinations will be disrupted.
Statistics show that one child in every 13 born in Papua New Guinea die before the age of five – which is higher than any other country in the Pacific.
These deaths can easily be prevented with readily available vaccines. The biggest challenge causing low immunisation coverage in PNG is that many children do not get vaccinated for some reason.
This places PNG at a risk of disease outbreaks if immediate actions are not in place to get these left-out children vaccinated.
Health experts are continually calling for everyone, including parents, to help ensure their children are immunised with vaccines that are freely being given in government-run health facilities.
Immunisation coverage in PNG (nationwide) is low and if the trend continues, experts predict that an outbreak of diseases and infections for children in the next two years.
The immunisation coverage level required by WHO was 80 per cent but most of the provinces were showing about 60 per cent coverage.
PNG, some two years ago, had less than 75 per cent of immunisation coverage.
Having a low immunisation coverage rate means a high percentage of children are not protected against preventable diseases such as measles, pneumonia, Tuberculosis, whooping cough, hepatitis B, diphtheria and meningitis.
This is definitely not good news.
Information out of the PNG Uicef office says hundreds of children and women in PNG miss out on the life-saving immunisation because they live in remote isolated areas.
And that has led to an increase in deaths of children under five from vaccine-preventable diseases such as whooping cough, meningitis, pneumonia, and neonatal tetanus and many suffer permanent damage.
Everyone has a big responsibility to continue working and working extra hard until PNG reaches a point that we feel we have a reason to celebrate.
The wheels for change in immunisation should turn and turn in the right direction and accelerate speed to get the coverage gap by reach the 95 per cent or even 100 per cent or closer.
As authorities respond to the Covid-19 pandemic in the country, our efforts to strengthen and increase immunisation in the country should continue.