2023-04-21 04:54:36
America had historically been a “world leader” in disease control, such as polio, eradicated in 1994; measles, in 2016, and tetanus, in 2017.
The American continent faces an “imminent crisis” of outbreaks of diseases that were considered overcome by the lag in public vaccination services, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) warned this Thursday (04.20.2023).
In a press conference, the director Jarbas Barbosa affirmed that the COVID-19 pandemic it has aggravated the lag in disease immunizations.
“As we emerge from the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the risk of new and emerging outbreaks in the region is at the highest level in the last 30 years,” said the director of PAHO, an organization based in in Washington and affiliated with the World Health Organization (WHO).
“Serious setbacks” in the last decade
Barbosa explained that America had historically been a “world leader” in disease control, such as poliomyelitis, eradicated in 1994; measles, in 2016, and tetanus, in 2017.
But, in the last decade, there have been “serious setbacks”such as a drastic drop in vaccination coverage rates, inadequate financing, and growing reluctance of the population to get vaccinated due to “disinformation”.
“The pandemic exacerbated each of these trends,” said Barbosa, who warned that the Americas “faces an imminent crisis around vaccination services.”
According to PAHO, in 2021 more than 2.7 million children under one year of age, one in five, did not receive all the doses of vaccines, leaving them susceptible to diseases such as polio, tetanus, measles or diphtheria.
Barbosa assured, however, that PAHO is “working closely” with the region’s Health Ministries to “recover the vaccination coverage rates” that existed in the past.
VT (efe, reuters)
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