Brazil has one of the largest public vaccination systems in the world. But it would be impossible to apply more than 300 million doses of vaccine per year without a battalion trained for this work. There are around 193 thousand nurses and nursing technicians who work in more than 38 thousand vaccination rooms across the country. And often outside of them, going to where the population is. This Thursday (17), when National Vaccination Day is celebrated, professionals warn that every opportunity to guide the population must be taken advantage of.
One of these professionals is nurse Viviane de Almeida, who has worked administering vaccines for 16 years and now works at the Super Centro Carioca de Vaccination, in Rio de Janeiro. When she was still a nursing technician, she worked on a flu vaccination campaign and never wanted to know anything else.
“A completely different perspective, to prevent us from getting sick from diseases that can be prevented through vaccination. That’s what really made me fall in love with it”, says Viviane.
Vaccination Calendar
The National Immunization Program offers 31 vaccines and this list is constantly updated. Just this year, for example, the vaccine against Covid-19 became part of the basic calendar, the vaccine against dengue began to be administered to teenagers, and the drop against polio was retired, giving way to the injectable booster and the against HPV became a single dose. In other words, to work in a vaccine room you need to understand immunization and constantly update yourself. Including to inform the population.
“The opportunity to visit [ao posto de saúde] It has to be seen as a unique opportunity. We don’t know if that user will come back, take advantage of that moment to evaluate it as a whole, what is pending, what can be done at that moment. He entered the room, it’s an opportunity, whether as a companion, a mother who took her son”, defends Viviane.
Agents
The nurse and director of the Brazilian Society of Immunizations, Mayra Moura, also draws attention to the importance of the work of another professional: the community health agent. There are almost 300,000 people in Brazil responsible for accompanying families served by the basic health care service in each community.
“When you establish this bond of trust you can have this power of persuasion, but this also involves preparing these professionals, understanding their role in this system. The role of vaccination, being comfortable answering questions, so that they can give a look: ‘look at that age you would have to have had these vaccines’, an elderly person, a pregnant woman, a person who is undergoing cancer treatment, and that there are vaccines that are important in that situation”, explains Mayra.
The nurse also assesses that the increase in family health teams, and the training and engagement of these professionals are essential actions to reverse vaccination declines.
“Within nursing, immunization is within primary care, but in practice it is the vaccination room there and the family health teams doing other work. So, when the team goes to someone’s house it would have to be there in the checklist immunization is also theirs”, argues Mayra.
Since last year, Brazil has been increasing vaccine coverage in the basic calendar, but it is still far from ideal. Until September, only the meningococcal C vaccine had exceeded the recommended rate of 95%. And some immunizations still have very low coverage, dTpa, recommended mainly for pregnant women, for example, was applied to only 53% of the target audience. And less than 30% of babies took the vaccine against Covid-19.
