The Ministry of Health (MOH) has introduced a second dose of Measles – rubella vaccine into the routine immunization schedule to be taken by children aged one year and a half.
Dr. Alfred Driwale, the Manager Uganda National Expanded Programme on Immunization (UNEPI) told journalists on Monday that measles is a disease targeted for elimination globally and that to achieve this, Uganda resolved to start giving two doses of the vaccine since the one dose currently given only offers 85% protection.
According to the current national schedule, a measles – rubella vaccine is given to a child at nine months of age. The newly introduced second dose that starts in March will be given to children at the age of one and half years.
Ministry of Health says by October, 2022 all children aged between one and four years will be required to take a second dose of measles – rubella vaccine after which all children will now be required to have taken doses of the vaccine if they are to be considered fully immunization.
At the launch meeting which also had other immunization experts from elsewhere in Africa, countries shared experiences on the introduction of vaccines after the first year of life of children and what Uganda can learn from elsewhere since the country’s schedule has only been stopping at below one year.
Dr. Simon Antara, the Executive Director of the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET) said so far Ghana has been a good example of countries that are doing well after introduction of jabs after one year with a high coverage of newly introduced vaccines.
He said populations need to be prepared to accept new vaccines as they come in since immunization programmes are going to be evolving depending on the disease burden that countries currently face.
However, Uganda already has plans of introducing other new vaccines for children older than one year on the schedule including that against meningitis and yellow fever initially in endemic areas. So far, Dr. Driwale says for children older than a year, they only have HPV for ten-year old girls and Tetanus for adolescent girls.
While the World Health Organization has over the last one year been announcing that countries faced major disruptions in routine vaccines uptake at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Driwale says for Uganda the disruptions were experienced only at the beginning but the country quickly came up with a continuity of care strategy which helped them reach people with routine services.
He says the lowest coverage of the fourteen vaccines on the routine schedules, measles had the lowest coverage at 91%.
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