By Patience Loum
As global efforts in amplifying the need for vaccines against Covid-19 continue to accelerate, there remains the urge to address the effects these vaccinations have on other medical vaccines like the immunization of children.
So far, only three vaccines are approved for use in The Gambia; Johnson and Johnson, AstraZeneca, and Sinopharm. However, there has been no data showing that these vaccines have any effect on other vaccines like the immunizations given to children.
“There are no effects of COVID-19 vaccine on the children as they are not targeted for COVID-19 vaccine but COVID-19, as a disease has seriously affected children as many of them, are unreached for routine health care services including immunization,” said Aja Kandeh, Communications officer for the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI).
She said people were reluctant to visit health facilities for fear of getting infected with COVID-19.
“This led to children missing their vaccination schedule thereby opening room for disease outbreaks such as polio and measles outbreaks registered in the country sometime last year and this year and this was why MoH embarked on vaccination campaigns. So the COVID-19 pandemic had a serious effect on health, especially on children,” says Kandeh.
Currently, the Ministry of Health is on a Measles and Rubella immunization campaign, targeting children 15 and below. These vaccines are meant to help protect teens and children from getting infected with diseases.
Overall, a total of 180,506 children have been vaccinated against measles and Rubella making the total percentage 52.9%.
However, according to officials from the EPI working with the Ministry of Health, due to the recent outbreak of Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) cases, there has been a huge downturn in the vaccine campaign.
“We conducted the Measles-Rubella vaccination last month targeting children under five years and this happened almost the same time as the AKI which confused many people and many of the parents refused the vaccination and for the first time the country registered the lowest campaign coverage.”
Kandeh said, “the AKI had to some extent contributed to the refusals as many parents do not distinguish preventive and curative” care.
This has therefore had a very negative impact on the number of vaccinations to be given out.
Kandeh highlighted that It is important for children to get vaccinated because there are diseases which can be prevented by vaccination such as polio, measles, meningitis, tetanus, cervical cancer and many other deadly and easily transmissible diseases.
AKI in the Gambia
On 8th August 2022, the Epidemiology and Disease Control (EDC) Unit under the Ministry of Health published a situational report on AKI.
The condition was observed among 32 children below 5 years, resulting in the deaths of 28 children.
On 26th July 2022, the EDC unit received a report through the Director of Health Services from a concerned nephrologist (a kidney specialist) of a sudden raise in cases of AKI among children aged 5 months – 4 years.
Shortly after that, the Ministry of Health came out with a statement confirming the death of over 60 children following a post from the World Health Organization (WHO).
More Need to be Vaccinated
Although this has had a very serious impact on the vaccination campaign, officials in the immunization campaign are calling out to people to come out and get vaccinated.
“High vaccination coverage prevents disease outbreaks so vaccination is important to protect the population from disease,” said Kandeh.