(Trinidad Guardian) Concerned about the recent re-emergence of the polio virus in London and New York, Health Minister Terence Deyalsingh is now urging parents to ensure that their children receive their childhood immunisations.
Speaking at the launch of the South West Regional Health Authority’s True Voluntary Blood Campaign yesterday, the minister said cases in developed countries was a scary development.
“On the heels of COVID, then came monkeypox and on the heels of monkeypox is now coming a very scary development in New York. I don’t know if anyone read the international news this morning, but I started to alert the country a month ago that the polio virus was found in sewerage in London and yesterday, New York City recorded its first polio cases in a decade in a young adult who is now paralysed,” Deyalsingh said.
The Minister noted, however, that there has been decline in childhood immunisation in T&T during the pandemic.
“Our childhood vaccination programme, especially for polio, we are one to two per cent percentage points off from where we should be. The minimal requirement for herd immunity is 95 per cent. We used to attain that prior to COVID because to get into school, you had to show proof of childhood vaccinations being a part of the programme. Because schools were closed for two years, many parents did not have to go through that rigour and our MMR, yellow fever, polio vaccination rates dropped. We went on a drive and we made up that,” Deyalsingh said.
However, with the recent emergence of live polio virus in London and the New York case, Deyalsingh urged parents who have not started the vaccination regime for their children for polio and other childhood diseases to “please get on board and start the programme.”
“It will be a sad day if in a country of 1.4 million people, which is relatively small, we get a case of measles, mumps, rubella, yellow fever, whopping cough or polio. We don’t want to see that here.”
Deyalsingh also noted that the anti-COVID-19 vaccine campaign is now influencing people against taking vaccines in general.
“I am advising parents and children to not give in and not pay undue attention to the anti-vaccine sentiment against the COVID-19 vaccine for children between the ages of five and 11 being perpetrated by five individuals who should know better,” he said.
“The message is that the unsuspecting public, the unsuspecting parent, is not making the distinction between what they are hearing about COVID-19 vaccines and they are interpreting that information and transposing it to vaccines in general and that is the collateral damage that the anti-vaxxers are having around the world, not only in Trinidad and Tobago.”
What is Polio
According to the World Health Organisation, Polio (poliomyelitis) is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus. It invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours. The virus is transmitted by person-to-person spread mainly through the faecal-oral route or, less frequently, by a common vehicle (for example, contaminated water or food) and multiplies in the intestine.
Initial symptoms are fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiffness of the neck and pain in the limbs. One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis (usually in the legs). Among those paralysed, 5–10% die when their breathing muscles become immobilised.
