The poliomyelitis It is one of the diseases that most risk of resurgencedue to Low vaccination schemes that occur in Mexico. This was announced by a group of experts in a forum organized by the pharmaceutical company Sanofi in Mexico.
In the panel it was announced that at the end of 2021 the vaccination schemes for children from 12 to 35 months only reached between 56 and 86 percent; and 27.5% in 1-year-old boys and girls, leaving this sector of the population exposed to the outbreak of diseases such as poliomyelitis.
The decline in vaccination schedules began to occur since the end of 2020, at that time, various international organizations warned of the importance of recovering vaccination schedules that were disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, leaving infants unprotected against diseases such as diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, hepatitis B, poliomyelitis, among others.
According to the Ministry of Health, through an analysis of the risk of a poliovirus outbreak at the municipal level, it indicated that 47% of the municipalities are at high and very high risk of a regrowth of the disease31% at medium risk and 22% at low risk.
According to the World Health Organization, polio mostly affects children under 5 years of age, and explains that as long as there is only one infected child, children in all countries are at risk of contracting the disease.
Worldwide, efforts to combat the disease are marked through a Polio Eradication Strategy 2022-2026, which aims to end the virus in places where it still exists and prevent it from returning to regions where it is eradicated. .
In September of this year, heThe Ministry of Health started the intensive campaign of the hexavalent vaccine in children under one year of agewhich protects against six diseases: poliomyelitis, tetanus, hepatitis B, diphtheria, haemophilus influenzae type B and whooping cough, with the aim of achieving the greatest coverage against these conditions and preventing poliomyelitis from returning to the country.
This application should be done at two, four and six months of age, plus a booster at 18 months; It is available throughout the public health sector and is totally free, so it is essential that parents review their children’s booklet and go to their nearest health center to complete their schemes if necessary.
In this regard, Eduardo Arias de la Garza, Pediatric Infectologist, attached to the INP Pediatric Infectious Diseases Service said that:
“The goal of the Universal Vaccination Program of the Ministry of Health is the control of these diseases through immunization of 95% of the population at risk. It is considered that, if this percentage is reached, we can speak of healthy vaccination rates; However, in our country, only the state of Nuevo León reaches this figure and we have states that barely reach 59% coverage”.
“This deficit is leading us to the fact that the outbreak of diseases such as poliomyelitis become an increasingly closer realitybecause despite the fact that this disease was eradicated in Mexico since 1990, it has resurfaced not only in Africa and Asia, where a total of 30 cases have been recorded so far in 2022, but also in nearby countries such as the United States, where in In July of this year, a 20-year-old man was diagnosed with the disease and traces of the virus have been found in wastewater from different parts of the country.”
For his part, Gregory López, Vaccine Medical Manager, Sanofi, Mexico, said that “The results of this analysis are extremely worrying, since poliomyelitis is a disease that affects the cells of the spinal cord causing paralysis and can be fatal. However, if we act on time it can be preventable with vaccination.”
“Vaccines are victims of their own success. We have forgotten that in the past this disease took thousands of lives and people are beginning to believe that vaccination is no longer necessary. We must change the landscape and protect children from what we can protect them from, because it is not only about polio, many other diseases threaten to resurge or increase their prevalence if we do not do something to increase vaccination numbers in our country.”
Eduardo Arias de la Garza, Pediatric Infectologist, attached to the INP Pediatric Infectious Diseases Service, commented that “This vaccine protects against six diseases in a single dose, which reduces the number of injections that children must receive and improves logistics and delivery times. application to achieve complete coverage.
There is still a lot of work to be done, at the end of 2021, only 78% of the children completed their scheme with the three doses corresponding to the hexavalent vaccine. But the important thing is not to take your finger off the line until we achieve 95% coverage.”
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The specialist indicated that vaccines save lives and that through these not only boys and girls are protected, but the entire population; especially in a society where migration and the increase in the possibilities of traveling from one country to another expose the country to diseases that are no longer found in our territory, making it increasingly urgent to recover immunization rates.
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