Vaccinations in the SOS Zone!

With all the proclaimed good intentions that result from vaccinations, few people, even mothers who are supposed to be at the forefront, have ever shown the required concern necessary to hold down the number of infectious diseases which could be kept at bay just with a vaccination.

When in 2000 at the Millennium summit in New York Cameroon adhered to the Millennium Development Goals, there was some hidden confidence that at least with regard to holding down infant mortality, our nation was going to make some effort and have something to show in 2015 by way of a drastic drop in the number of infant deaths.

But trends have proven us wrong, due largely to the apathetic attitude towards vaccinating young children and thereby preventing infections and even deaths. Successive government initiatives to get the needy populations interested in the national enlarged programmes on vaccinations have hardly ever met the set targets because of the afore-mentioned passive attitude of parents who do not often see the urgency of sending their siblings for vaccination.

This negligence, translated into statistics, is rather disturbing. At world level, the situation is alarming as every 20 seconds a child is dying from a disease preventable by vaccination. The World Health Organisation believes it has done more than human endeavour can do to remind all of the necessity of getting these vaccinations done and the negative effects of any neglect on over-all human social and economic development. In our country, the authorities have tried just about every possible means to get parents on board?

It is in the vindication of this government posture that to introduce the new rotavirus vaccine to check diarrhoea in children the authorities of the Ministry of Public Health have taken the extra-mile. They first began with media men and women over the weekend; then came various national communities before the turn of the civil society came last Wednesday to explain all the good intentions and efficacy of the new vaccination. Probably, most of the parents of the 18 000 babies hospitalized each year in Cameroon for acute child diarrhea do not even know of the existence of the vaccine which is administered for free!

The governmental authorities were breaking new ground by going towards the local communities to preach the good news of vaccinations. Citizens ought to avail themselves of these new possibilities offered to keep potential infections and other attacks at bay, especially when these vaccines are offered for free for children of up to 10 months. This apathy cannot be a poverty problem. Some have blamed the lack of interest in various vaccination campaigns to wrong cultural beliefs. Yet, the reality seems to point more to a problem of sensitization; and the government initiative to develop new communication strategies to reach out to the largest numbers of parents can only be encouraged.

But this communication effort has to go beyond officialdom, because the parents and all the stakeholders involved in child health are all called upon to be the whistle blowers over all acts that tend to negate the effort to reduce child mortality to the levels prescribed by the Millennium Development Goals in New York in 2000 to which our country voluntarily subscribed. The deadline for the realization of the MDG objective, especially in reducing infant mortality, is 2015. Just next year! There is therefore need to consider these issues as priority. We are in a veritable Save Our Souls (SOS) type of situation.