The fight against polio and measles in the Americas goes back three decades: PAHO

Laura Poy Solano

Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, April 25, 2022, p. eleven

Given the drastic drop in vaccination coverage rates in children and newborns, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) estimates that it is facing a three-decade setback in the fight against polio and measles. The effects of the covid-19 pandemic extend to all fields of health, and vaccine-preventable diseases are no exception.

The first year of the pandemic left 2.7 million children in Latin America and the Caribbean without immunization or with incomplete schemes, so they have become susceptible to contracting diseases such as measles, polio and diphtheria, the first two eliminated of the region before the pandemic.

The multinational organization added that the coverage rate with the three doses of the biological against polio stood at 82 percent in 2020, the lowest percentage since 1994, while the regional coverage rate against measles, mumps and rubella (with the triple viral vaccine SRP1) was 87 percent, six points less than in 2016, when it reached 93 percent.

Regional coverage for diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (with the DTP3 vaccine) also fell from 91 percent in 2016 to 85 percent in 2020. These are rates that are below the 95 percent coverage recommended by PAHO. to prevent outbreaks.

In the report Immunization in the Americas 2021, recently published, PAHO points out that the decrease in immunization coverage, coupled with suboptimal epidemiological surveillance, jeopardize the achievements made by the region in the control of vaccine-preventable diseases.

Among the risks that countries, including Mexico, face is the high probability that diseases that had already been eliminated, eradicated or controlled in the Americas will be reintroduced or re-emerged.

mainland campaign

In an effort to accelerate inoculation against covid-19, but also to close coverage gaps in other drug-preventable diseases, PAHO announced Vaccination Week in the Americas, with which it seeks to immunize from 23 to 30 April to 140 million people.

In two years of the pandemic, the attention paid to controlling covid-19, with overwhelmed professionals and health systems, has fostered a drop in vaccination rates for other diseases, warns the agency, which issued a call to the population of the continent to go to get immunized against the coronavirus, but also to ensure that no minor is left without a complete prevention scheme, to combat other evils.

He recalled that the region is a global benchmark in immunizations. In 1971, it became the first area in the world to wipe out smallpox.

In 1994 it managed to certify the elimination of poliomyelitis; in 2015 it ended the public health threat of rubella and congenital rubella syndrome. In 2016, measles ceased to be a concern. And in 2017, neonatal tetanus.