Toddlers to be vaccinated

Baku/23.04.18/Turan: Within the framework of the European Immunization Week on April 23-29, Azerbaijan will campaign for vaccination of children. This annual international action is held under the auspices of the World Health Organization.

It is aimed at raising awareness of the importance of immunization for human health, increasing vaccination coverage by informing parents, health care staff, policy makers in protecting children's rights, and the media about the importance of this event.

In 2007 our country joined the European Immunization Week (EIW). According to the profile department of the Ministry of Health, appropriate preparatory work was carried out to implement the planned activities within the EIW, vaccines were purchased. In all local polyclinics there will be a mop-up immunization - vaccination of children for any reasons not fully vaccinated or not vaccinated at all. This prevention includes vaccinations against the main infectious diseases: tuberculosis, hepatitis B, polio, whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus, measles, rubella, mumps, hemophilia, pneumonia vaccine against pneumonia. Vaccination is done for babies up to a year - at 7 and 9 months.

In recent years, many parents in Azerbaijan have developed a negative attitude towards vaccination of children. Therefore, district doctors and nurses of children's polyclinics have to call their parents and insistently ask the child to be vaccinated. They come to the polyclinic, but only to write a refusal of this procedure. At the same time for vaccination, they go to private clinics. Their fears and doubts about the effectiveness of the vaccine are not groundless. Social networks and the media presents dozens of facts about the negative consequences of the vaccine. For example, the newspaper "Echo" wrote about the Baku resident , Olga Alekperova, who was invited to the polyclinic for the planned inoculation of DTP (adsorbed pertussis diphtheria-tetanus vaccine) of her three-month daughter.

"The vaccine of Indian production was done in a polyclinic, the doctor was not interested in whether my baby was allergic or not. At home I put the baby to sleep, but after two hours she did not wake up when I began to think that something was wrong, I tried to wake her up, but my daughter did not wake up. I started calling an ambulance and a cousin who has a medical education. She said that I quickly put the child upside down and began to beat her on the heels. After that, my daughter opened her eyes and began to turn pink. Then the ambulance arrived, the doctors said that the baby had seizures - a reaction to the vaccine. The vaccine used in polyclinics is produced in Indian, and causes a lot of side effects, and therefore it is better to do a Belgian or French vaccine," the newspaper writes.

The site jam-news.net tells about a resident of Baku, Ahmed Rahmanov, whose son became an autistic seven years ago after vaccination. With great difficulty he managed to prove that the drug (either Russian or Indian production) contains mercury and aluminum more than the norm, which led to the development of autism in the child. Rahmanov sued the Ministry of Health to prove that the vaccines contain dangerous substances, but lost the case.

In a private conversation with a correspondent of Turan, an employee of one of the children's polyclinics in the Sabunchu district of the capital said that vaccines of Indian or Belgian production are given by state hospitals. When the shelf life of these drugs expires, they are taken back. They are not asked for often. Private clinics always purchase Belgian vaccines with a high degree of protective efficacy and without side complications. Complications can be associated with a violation of the vaccination technique, the peculiarity of the child's organism, poor quality of the medicine, violation of the conditions of its storage.

Meanwhile, the director of the Research Institute of Pediatrics, the country's chief pediatrician Nasib Guliyev strongly advises parents to vaccinate their children in order to protect them from infection with infectious diseases.

"But it's not the doctor who cannot get someone to go. In this case, according to the law, the doctor of a polyclinic or parents write a statement-withdrawal from vaccination. The quality of vaccines, which are purchased by Azerbaijan from foreign producers, is quite high. Virtually every vaccine has WHO requirements. One of the basic requirements for a vaccine is safety. All these issues are checked by specialists of the Ministry of Health," Guliyev said. -0-