Westmoreland Heightens Vaccination Drive

The Westmoreland Health Department continues its drive to ensure that children in the parish are adequately vaccinated for their age.

Medical Officer of Health for the parish, Dr. Marcia Graham, said that the ongoing initiative will be heightened during Vaccination Week of the Americas, which will be observed from April 24 to April 30 under the theme ‘Get Up to Date, Each Vaccine Counts’.

“We have been given a mandate to identify all our children, 12 years and younger, who have missed vaccines, to find them and get them adequately vaccinated,” she noted.

Dr. Graham, who was addressing the monthly meeting of the Westmoreland Municipal Corporation in Savanna-la-Mar on Thursday (April 13), said that the country’s vaccination programme has helped to eradicate several diseases and safeguard the health of citizens.

“We know that because of the vaccination programme a lot of us don’t know what polio looks like; a lot of us don’t know what somebody with whooping cough sounds like. Our vaccination programme has protected our children and protected us from a lot of disabling conditions, and we need everybody to assist us so that we can maintain that. Let’s not get careless; let’s not take it for granted,” she encouraged.

The Medical Officer of Health implored parents to take advantage of the opportunity to get their children’s vaccination up to date.

“So, we are asking that whenever you hear that the health team will be visiting the schools, that you bring in the immunisation records …[so] we can check to make sure that our children have all the appropriate and relevant vaccines,” she urged.

Turning to other matters, Dr. Graham encouraged residents to take personal responsibility for the destruction of mosquito breeding sites in and around their homes to prevent the spread of the dengue virus.

“We don’t want you to rely solely on the health department team to come and search and destroy breeding sites, because we do not have the manpower to do that on a weekly basis, which is what the recommended period is,” she said.

“We want to encourage you to adopt… weekly checking in your space… especially if we are being blessed with rain. Please do that and make sure that you store the water safely so that mosquitos don’t have access to lay their eggs in your water-storage containers,” Dr. Graham said.

She further advised citizens to protect themselves from mosquito bites by covering the exposed areas of their bodies as much as possible and use a mosquito repellent or meshes where possible.