Ministry and doctors announce joint action for vaccination – 04/18/2023 – Health

The AMB (Brazilian Medical Association) and the Ministry of Health have joined efforts to restore vaccination coverage of various types of immunizers in the country.

The idea is that, with the coordinated actions of the ministry and the medical entity, the population’s awareness of the importance of getting vaccinated will increase, recovering the vaccination rates lost in recent years.

The AMB represents 54 Brazilian medical societies. In the last four years, under the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), there has been a separation between medical entities and the Ministry of Health, largely due to the anti-scientific positions of the former president.

The meeting, held this Tuesday (18), was the first to take place since the beginning of the pandemic, in 2020. The gynecologist and president of AMB, César Eduardo Fernandes, the secretary of health and environment surveillance, Ethel Maciel, the director of SBI (Brazilian Society of Infectology), Marcos Antônio Cirilo, Renato Kfouri, vice president of Sbim (Brazilian Society of Immunization) and the president of the Brazilian Association of Allergy and Immunology, Fábio Chigres Kushinir, in addition to Eder Gatti, secretary of the Department of the National Immunization Program (DPNI) and pulmonologist Margareth Dalcolmo, ambassador of the Ministry of Health’s vaccination campaign.

The low vaccination coverage of all vaccine-preventable diseases in the childhood calendar puts a greater risk of recurrence of these diseases, assesses César Fernandes, from the AMB. According to him, terms like “vaccine hesitation” were not part of the medical vocabulary a few years ago.

“The biggest concern at the time I graduated was to prevent the diseases that affected thousands of children, such as polio, with vaccines. Unfortunately, the drop in vaccine coverage puts the population at risk for the return of these diseases. working paper [a vacinação] in the medical and academic environment, with the sole and exclusive objective of the well-being of the population. We cannot have ideological or political passions, that is not up to doctors,” he said, criticizing the conduct of some doctors who are against vaccination.

For him, one of the reasons that have led to the drop in vaccines is the fear of side effects of immunizers, which leads to fear in the population and a false perception of risks being greater than benefits.

“This also involves proper communication by doctors when guiding their patients. All the drugs we take have effects, but they are generally known and well evaluated. This is the same issue with vaccines, the risks are generally very high. low and well known, with effects generally passing quickly. Therefore, there is a need to raise awareness of the benefit versus the risk, which is very low.”

In addition to communication challenges and restoring the population’s confidence in vaccines, other difficulties in resuming vaccine rates include structural problems, such as lack of vaccine stocks, difficult access to vaccination posts and lack of coordination between states, municipalities and the federal government. .

“This year in which we complete 50 years of the National Immunization Program [PNI] we have several barriers ranging from communication, access, difficulties that are diverse and unequal in different regions. Added to this is the organized anti-vaccination movement, which has grown in recent years with social networks”, explains infectologist and vice president of Sbim, Renato Kfouri.

“It is necessary to look for how to motivate the population in a scenario like this, where many of the diseases do not exist, but are returning.”

The importance, therefore, of the union of the AMB with the Ministry of Health is essential for people to regain confidence in vaccines, according to the director of the DPNI, infectologist Eder Gatti.

“The population trusts its doctors, trusts the medical society, and that is why it is essential that doctors reiterate that vaccines are safe and effective”, said Gatti.

The road will be arduous, but recovery, although slow, is already expected for 2023, according to Ethel Maciel. “This is the first public act in favor of seeking a solution to a complex problem. We have several actions such as centralizing the vaccination portfolio in an integrated system, carrying out campaigns in schools, resuming the conditionality of the vaccine on time for social assistance programs like Bolsa Família, promoting campaigns with medical entities. So we expect a recovery this year aiming, in 2024, to already establish the levels we had until 2015.”

Some of the diseases that cause the most concern are those that most seriously affect the two extremes of the population, the youngest and the oldest, says researcher and pulmonologist Margareth Dalcolmo.

“Today we have a huge impact due to the increase in mortality from preventable diseases in childhood. If all medical societies had a department today dedicated to immunization at both ends of life, we can reduce the impact of these diseases that are most common in morbidity and mortality in these two ranges age ranges”, he said, noting that respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis are on the rise again in Brazil, with an increase even in children, where the severe forms are prevented by vaccination with BCG.

Finally, experts say that there is no simple solution to the problem of parents who hesitate to vaccinate their children, for example against Covid.

“At the time of vaccination of adults, the fear of Covid was greater, but when it reached children, the effect of the damage caused by misinformation was greater. Vaccinated parents were afraid to vaccinate their children, and often due to lack of knowledge. to think about communication and train pediatricians to discuss vaccination with them.”