 |
Ministry urges to conduct routine immunization in the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) |
The Ministry of Health yesterday sent an official dispatch to competent agencies and localities urging them to identify demand for the supply of vaccines in the program. The Ministry also had guidance on those who must receive vaccines and compulsory vaccination schedule in the Expanded Program on Immunization.
Specifically, infants must be vaccinated against hepatitis B while children under 1 year old ought to receive vaccines against BCG, bOPV, DPT-VGB-Hib, IPV and measles and children from 1 to 5 years old should be vaccinated against Japanese encephalitis. Pregnant women should get a tetanus vaccine.
The vaccines included in this guide are based on the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Advisory Council on Vaccine Use of the Ministry of Health and the epidemiological situation of infectious diseases in Vietnam.
Recently, WHO and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) issued a press release encouraging urgent efforts in Vietnam to reverse the dramatic decline in vaccination rates of essential vaccines, causing many children not to be protected against vaccine-preventable diseases.
The Covid-19 pandemic has severely disrupted childhood immunization, with 67 million children missing out entirely or partially on routine immunization between 2019 and 2021, leaving them vulnerable to a range of preventable diseases, the statement said. Of these, nearly 250,000 children in Vietnam missed one or more doses of the vaccine.
On the same day, the Ministry of Health said that the country had an additional 1,202 cases of Covid-19, down 42 cases compared to May 1. Worse, four Covid-19 patients in the Central City of Da Nang, the Southern Province of Dong Nai, Ho Chi Minh City and the Northern Province of Lang Son succumbed to the coronavirus on the day bringing the total number of Covid-19 deaths during the last three days to 11.
