Child vaccinations seen as vital to preventing deaths

By ZINA KOIM

MEASLES, rubella, and polio can lead to death if children are not vaccinated according to the Health Department’s population and family service manager Dr Edward Waramin.
Dr Waramin said people need to understand what measles, rubella, and polio are and why it is important to vaccinate children.
He described measles as a highly infectious viral disease that spreads from persons to persons through sneezing coughing and close personal contact.
“It is almost like the flu virus that people get,” he said.
“It spreads through cough and droplets.
“When the persons gets it, there is a high fever and general rash. With the measles it eventually adds up in the lungs and causes pneumonia,”
Dr Waramin said the signs include high fever and general skin rash and it eventually adds in the lung and can cause pneumonia.
“Pneumonia means the infection of the lungs ad can be caused by bacteria such as the other anopheles’ pneumonia or TB.
“Those are the bacterial infection. “Virus can also cause pneumonia.”
He defined rubella as a virus and the infection would not be so much on the person who catches it but problematic for pregnant women.
“If the mother is pregnant, this virus can pass through her and goes to the baby,” he said.
“It interferes with the baby’s brain development and everything else and can kills the baby.
“We call it the congenital rubella syndrome.”
If the women catches this in pregnancy in can pass to their foetus and it can lead to death or the congenital rubella syndrome and it has bad effects, mostly the eyes, ears, heart and the brain,”
Dr Waramin explained polio as the infectious disease cause by polio virus bad mostly affects he young children.
Dr Waramin said that it spreads through the physic.
“It happens in situation unconducive environment such as settlements mostly,” he said.
“This country has a lot of settlements.
“They don’t really think about where they settle.
“They done think about there is no power, water and no nothing you will still see people living there,”
He said myelitis referred to the inflammation of the brain and the spinal code especially the motor neurons.
“When the virus enters through the cut it get haven to the blood stream it favours those nerves, the motor neurons,” he said.
“When it affects the motor neurons, the child becomes, the nerves actually suffer and the child develops deformities in their hands and legs especially in the peripheral motor.
“You see the hands and the legs become small, there’s difficulty in more
“It almost always results in deformities of the limbs.”
Dr Waramin said according to recommendation from World Health Organisation (WHO), measles and rubella vaccines work together.
“Recommendation from WHO is that when we give the measles vaccine, we also give rubella vaccine,” he said.“They go well together.”