November 20, 2013
Minister of Health, Dr. Fenton Ferguson says the Government has been quite relentless to ensure that Jamaica’s immunization programme gets the necessary resources. He said immunization is one of the critical areas in health in which we cannot afford to drop the ball. Dr. Ferguson was speaking during the opening ceremony of the 29th Caribbean Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) Managers Meeting yesterday at the Jewel Runaway Bay Beach and Golf Resort.
“We do not have to go too far to understand the devastating effect that vaccine preventable diseases can have on our population. In the polio outbreak of 1954 in Jamaica paralytic cases of the disease reached enormous proportions. Few or no children under the age of 4 were immunized. The attack rate was about 174 per 100,000. There were subsequent outbreaks in 1957, 1960, 1964 and 1982. There are persons around today whose lives have been severely affected by polio whether it is through the loss of a family member or by permanent paralysis,” Dr. Ferguson explained.
He said he would never want to see a repeat of such outbreak periods especially since it is within our power to prevent something like that ever happening again. Immunization is one of the most cost effective health interventions that we can make and that will give us quick and substantial results.
Jamaica had the last case of polio in 1982, the last case of locally transmitted measles in 1991, the last case of diphtheria in 1995, the last case of rubella in 2000 and the last case of newborn tetanus in 2001.
“Our gains can be easily wiped out if we all do not take the necessary precautions and move our programmes steadily along to meet our collective goal to eliminate vaccine preventable diseases,” the Minister said.
Jamaica has made considerable achievements in its EPI programme. For 2012 we were able to achieve 97 percent coverage for BCG, 96 percent for polio, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus (DPT), haemophilus influenza type B and hepatitis B and 93 percent for the first dose of Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR).
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