Parents cop the blame as children miss out on vaccination

MANY children are not vaccinated because parents are not bringing them to the vaccination sites.
Cathy Gui, a women leader Tubuserea village outside Port Moresby made these remarks during an Immunisation outreach to mark the 2019 world immunisation week.
The world immunisation week falls on the last week of April.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) it aims to promote the use of vaccines to protect people of all ages against diseases.
She said these parents knew that vaccination was important to prevent life threatening diseases but were ignorant or just too lazy to get their children vaccinated.
The Central government conducted the outreach with the aim to vaccinate as many children in the community.
Also to raise awareness about the critical importance of full immunisation throughout life and demonstrate the value of vaccines for the health of children, communities and the country.
Gui said many people have grade 12 education qualification and the awareness programmes conducted were for them to understand the importance of vaccination.
She said there was no excuse for parents to deny their children the privilege of being vaccinated.
Gui said if there was an outbreak an entire generation could be wiped out.
She encouraged everyone to ensure that all the children are immunised against polio, measles, rubella and other vaccine preventable diseases in coming routine immunisation programmes.
Health department’s expanded immunisation programme officer Dr Mathias Bauri said advocacy and social mobilisation was important because that would get more children vaccinated.
He said it was important for the awareness team to be clear with the dates and immunisation teams should be there at the set date, time and place.
“Next month the provincial health officers will gather in Port Moresby for an advocacy meeting.