Paediatricians are concerned about the decrease in childhood vaccinations for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) as stated by the Health Ministry on Wednesday. One private paediatrician said this was frightening and could put a strain on the health care system.
She said while she had seen a decrease in the number of people coming to her to vaccinate their children, she attributed it to other factors.
“I put it down to different reasons , whether it was because they can’t afford it any more, because I’m in private practice, I don’t give free shots, a lot of them who went to the health centre didn’t want to go to the health centre to be exposed and so they wanted to come private, others lost jobs and couldn’t afford private shots, as well as households had covid19 and went into crisis mode so they weren’t bothering with shots, and then there are the anti-vaxxers as well. They say kids are home and they aren’t mixing or going to school so what’s the point of doing the vaccinations?”
She said outbreaks of measles, mumps, and rubella, would be a huge problem, as based on the interactions she’s seen in her patients, there is mixing of children taking place. She emphasized that she has never seen a case of mumps or measles in the 27 years she’s returned to TT to practice.
“it is frightening because kids are mixing, even if schools aren’t officially open, I would say as much as 80 percent of my patients are in small pods, and people are travelling so we do have that international exposure to influenza and other things that can potentially seep into our population. It is a problem if numbers are down and will put a strain on the system as well”
She said normally the MMR vaccine is given at one year old and then usually between four and six, but the government had changed it to two years a few years ago as there were more migrants coming in from countries where they might not have access to vaccines or have low vaccine uptake.
The paediatrician said another problem was that pregnant women were not taking the covid19 vaccine, and this in some cases was preventing them getting their children vaccinated.
“A lot of mums I’ve attended to to delivery are not vaccinated because they don’t want to take a vaccine during pregnancy or their obstetrician didn’t insist, they’re covid negative to deliver, and then they don’t want to take the vaccine themselves, so when three months roll around where they have to get the baby vaccinated, it becomes an issue, because right now I’m not taking unvaccinated people in my office. So where they don’t come in to take vaccines for themselves, they can’t come in for their children or they may opt not to give it to their child as well, because they are not taking it themselves and they’re home.”
She said it was alarming how many mothers did not want to get vaccinated, and opted to deliver their babies in the public system where vaccination was not required.
She said another factor may be that vaccinations may not be being enforced by schools because school was taking place online.
