Vaccine education intensified
Education and advocacy efforts intensified during African Vaccination Week
The seventh Africa Vaccination week will be celebrated from 24 to 30 April and this year’s theme will be “Vaccines protect everyone, get vaccinated!”
This year, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) will be intensifying the education and advocacy efforts to help close the immunisation gap. To help with this, the NICD has published an up-to-date booklet with information especially for South African parents. The booklet can be downloaded by visiting this site.
The booklet focuses on vaccines used in the South African Immunisation Programme and gives helpful hints, tips and answers to frequently asked questions.
African Vaccination week celebrates the successes achieved in fighting infectious diseases through immunisation. As a result of immunisation and vaccines, the world is watching in anticipation as polio nears eradication. This is the second human disease to be eradicated, following smallpox in 1979. Tetanus in newborn babies has been eliminated in South Africa and the majority of the world, and diseases like diphtheria and measles have become a rare occurrence – but were much more common in our grandparents’ time.
During this week, the strides made globally through decades of the extended immunisation programmes will be celebrated and every effort made by each mother to ensure her child is fully vaccinated will be acknowledged.
Children up to the age of 12 are included in the South African vaccination schedule, showing that it is never too late to vaccinate. Each mother at a vaccination clinic participates in improving the health of all South Africans – in this generation as well as those to come.
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