Yellow fever immunization efforts in Brazil lags behind its goal, the Ministry of health has recognized this week, and officials said Friday that more than 16 million people in the target population still need to be immunized.
In January, the Ministry has embarked on a campaign to vaccinate more than 23 million people in the three States affected by the largest outbreak of mosquito-borne diseases for decades. As the outbreak expanded, the same officials, the population hoped to achieve, and now they want to vaccinate 38 million people in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia.
But these efforts were chasing rumors that vaccines are unsafe or ineffective, medical professionals struggled to effectively combat this misinformation.
So far they only made up 57 percent of the target population in the three States, resulting in more than 16 million people are unvaccinated, said Friday Carl Dominguez, coordinator of the national program of the Ministry of immunization. The Ministry announced in March that it had reached 76% of the target population, but said Dominguez, that rate was calculated before the goal was expanded.
The goal of the Ministry is to reach 95 percent of the target population, since the vaccine is not suitable for some people.
Yellow fever has long been common in large swaths of Brazil, but it is developing successfully in recent years and this is the second flash in a row in places where vaccination against the disease was not routine.
The current outbreak is the largest in more than three decades in the largest country in Latin America. While 1,127 people were infected, of which 331 died.
During the outbreak 2016-2017, more than 770 people infected after almost a decade, during which Brazil annually fewer than 10 cases.
In response to this, in advance of Brazil decided to offer routine vaccination for the whole country — but it will take about a year to fully deploy it.
Sourse: abcnews.go.com
