The Ministry of Health of the Mexican state of Jalisco refused to apply the Cuban Abdala vaccine as part of the reinforcement scheme against covid-19. According to you n statement of February 23this dose “lacks the endorsement of the World Health Organization (WHO) and there is, to date, no evidence of its efficacy and safety.”
The head of the state agency Fernando Petersen Aranguren sent a letter to the federal Health Secretary, Jorge Alcocer Varela, in which he detailed his concerns and the reason for the refusal to apply the vaccines, of which Mexico bought 9,000,000 from the Island.
“The studies we have on Abdala are phase one and phase two studies; phase three has not been reported,” Petersen Aranguren stressed this Saturday. “At this epidemiological point in time, we felt that the benefit versus cost was not that important.”
Petersen Aranguren commented that the Cuban Abdala dose “is not a vaccine that could be an extra benefit for the population” and reiterated that it is “in phase three when the effectiveness is seen.” He insisted that it will not be applied in the state health sector due to the lack of sufficient information on the “degree of protection it offers and the benefit it would have” for whoever receives it.
Because the clinics of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) and those of the Institute of Security and Social Services for State Workers (ISSSTE) depend directly on the Mexican Government, it was indicated that the vaccine will be available in these health centers. Cuban.
“The population must have all this information about the Abdala vaccine so that they can decide whether or not to apply it,” insisted Fernando Petersen Aranguren
“The population must have all this information about the Abdala vaccine so that they can decide whether or not to apply it,” insisted Fernando Petersen Aranguren.
The state official pointed out to the Secretary of Health that all the coronavirus vaccines that have been applied in the state of Jalisco are certified by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency ( EMA).
In Jalisco, 83% of the population over 18 years of age has a complete schedule of the covid-19 vaccine. Doses of AstraZeneca, Sinovac, Pfizer-BioNTech, Cansino and Moderna have been applied, all with WHO endorsement.
The rejection is not only from Jalisco, in Guanajuato, the Secretary of Health of Guanajuato, Daniel Díaz Martínez, warned that as long as the WHO does not endorse the Abdala vaccine “it is unlikely that it will be acquired” to apply it as part of the reinforcement scheme.
“We would prefer that vaccines that are already approved by the WHO arrive. At the moment they have not even told us that Abdala is going to arrive, so we are going to wait,” reported Díaz Martínez.
Until the first week of February, only 262,540 doses of the Abdala vaccine had been used to reinforce the scheme against the coronavirus in Mexico. This amount represents less than 3% of the nine million doses purchased from Cuba by that country.
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