In Mexico, 17 percent of girls and boys of the age to start their basic vaccination schedule against diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus have not received a single dose. This is something that Daniel Salas, Head of Immunizations at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), has warned about.
He explained that to this figure is added a five percent of minors who could have received the application of a biological, but since they are not followed up to complete the scheme, they do not have adequate protection.
19% of children are exposed to contracting these diseases because they do not have vaccination
Given this scenario, the PAHO official added that at least in Mexico and other countries in the Americas region, there are 19 percent of girls and boys who are exposed to contracting these diseases that are preventable because they are not “optimally vaccinated”.
Regarding this, he has expressed that “you see the number of children who do not have, even a vaccine, a dose in 2021. That represents 14 percent of children in the Americas, it is the proportion of children who are not vaccinated at all …And you see that there are countries that, due to their number of children, their number of population and their birth rate, represent the largest number in proportion, such as Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, the United States and Argentina”.
12 countries in the region of the Americas are at high or very high risk of suffering a polio outbreak
PAHO presented the document entitled “Tips for verifying information on COVID-19 vaccines. Guide for journalists. During said presentation, Daniel Salas added that until 2021, there were 2.7 million children under one year of age who did not receive their basic vaccination schedules. He added that the application of biologics against tuberculosis, rubella, measles, and mumps also showed a downward trend.
Although he did not provide further details, with respect to poliomyelitis, the PAHO head of immunizations pointed out that there is a possibility that 12 countries in the region of the Americas present a high or very high risk of suffering an outbreak, due to the fall of the vaccination rate and considering the registered case of an unvaccinated man, who was paralyzed by poliovirus in the United States last July.