NHF SPONSORS BACK TO SCHOOL IMMUNIZATION DRIVE

The Ministry of Health will be observing August 16-20, 2004 as Back to School Immunization Week, with sponsorship by the National Health Fund. The drive for increasing immunization at this time is to enable parents to comply with the Jamaican law that requires all children entering school, nursery and day care, to be adequately immunized for their age, before they can be accepted in school. During this week all major health centres will be offering immunization daily instead of only one day for the week as is customary

Immunization provides protection from a number of dangerous communicable diseases which could spread quickly in a crowded environment such as exists in schools. Presently clinics in the public health sector provide immunization free of cost for ten different diseases: Diptheria; Pertusis; Tetanus; Hepatitis B; Haemophilus Influenza Type B ; poliomyelitis; measles; mumps, rubella and tuberculosis.

The effectiveness of the immunization programme in Jamaica has seen the eradication of measles and poliomyelitis and significant reduction in other communicable diseases. Hon. John Junor, Minister of Health says, ?All parents and guardians have a duty to have their children immunized and protected from these dangerous diseases. With global travel, the spread of communicable diseases is a constant threat and therefore it is important for all children in Jamaica to be immunized to offer the best protection -because a chain is as strong as its weakest link.?

Acting Director of Family Health Services, Dr. Christine Gabbadon adds, ?The Back to School immunization Drive offers us another opportunity to achieve our target of one hundred percent immunization coverage for all children in Jamaica.?

Each year the Ministry has used this time to emphasis the importance of immunization for back to school. This year with the sponsorship from the National Health Fund the education campaign has been strengthened. The Fund will also be providing sixty new igloos to store vaccines during immunization sessions.