DIRECTOR OF Family Health Services in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Karen Lewis-Bell, has called for young mothers to immunise their infants in order to minimise exposure to life threatening diseases which kill an estimated three million children worldwide every year.
Dr. Lewis-Bell recently noted a decline in the Health Ministry's immunisation programme, with the average national coverage last year at 77 per cent, down from a high of 90 per cent in past years.
"We have been slipping," she lamented, citing statistics, which showed a drop in BCG coverage to 84 per cent, while vaccination for polio and hepatitis B had declined to 71 per cent and 76 per cent, respectively.
The doctor blamed the decline on the generation of young mothers, who have little or no knowledge of the devastation wreaked by outbreaks of diseases such as poliomyelitis in 1982.
Approximately 18,000 persons were estimated to have been affected by poliomyelitis that year, and 20 cases of death and 60 cases of paralysis were recorded.
The Ministry of Health provides vaccines free of cost to parents and Dr. Lewis-Bell is encouraging all mothers to have their infants vaccinated at their first post-natal visit at six weeks, then at three months, at five or six months, and then when the child is one year old.
