Individuals have been advised to seek booster doses of the tetanus jab. Experts say that vaccines given in infancy do not offer permanent immunity against the disease whose mortality rate is 100 per cent without treatment.
Dr Allan Muruta, the Commissioner of Public Health Emergencies at the Ministry of Health says many Ugandans are unaware of the correct schedule for tetanus vaccination and wrongly believe that the jab is given once in a lifetime.
According to the routine vaccination schedule under the Uganda National Expanded Programme on Immunization (UNEPI), a free tetanus vaccine is given in infancy at six weeks, 10 weeks and 14 weeks and to females aged 15-40 years to offer protection during childbirth. But Muruta says this should not be all especially when the death rate is too high.
He says all the people who contract tetanus end up in the intensive care unit and a lot of people have not witnessed on the ward how disastrous the disease can be.
UNEPI figures estimate that between 3000 and 5000 people get infected with tetanus each year in Uganda and according to Dr Hellen Aanyu, the Acting Deputy Director of Mulago National Referral Hospital, the majority of these die partly because of how complicated the disease is to treat. Even with treatment, she says 50 per cent of the sufferers will still die.
The majority of the patients they get are children of about seven years and she explains that by that age, the vaccine given in infancy will have waned. Now, experts are recommending that children get a booster dose at around six years of age and then embark on a ten-year schedule of boosters to guarantee lifelong protection.
On his part, however, Kenneth Mwehonge, the Executive Director of Coalition for Health Promotion and Social Development (HEPs Uganda), an NGO that is spearheading an awareness campaign encouraging people to get boosters, the challenge with Uganda is not just the vaccine as it can be accessed even in the private health facilities. For him, people are not even aware of the symptoms that some first suspect witchcraft when they start developing signs such as painful muscle spasms and immovable muscles.
He cites an example of a recent case where two children aged thirteen and fifteen succumbed at Kibuli hospital. He says these had been cut by broken glass as they played but took it lightly until they suddenly ended up in ICU and eventually died.
Another family whose nine-year-old has survived after spending sixty days in ICU, Mwehonge says they are still seeking donations to service a more than two hundred million shillings hospital bill.
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