Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is plead­ing with preg­nant women to get the in­fluen­za vac­cine.Dur­ing the launch of the min­istry’s 2024/2025 In­fluen­za Vac­ci­na­tion Cam­paign at its head of­fice at Queen’s Park East, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day,

Deyals­ingh said many women be­lieved the vac­cine would af­fect their un­born chil­dren.

“These vac­cines are ab­solute­ly safe for preg­nant women,” he as­sert­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to Deyals­ingh, when they look back at the close shaves and deaths over the years, there were al­ways two to three preg­nant women amongst them.

“We have to go to ex­treme lengths to save them,” he stat­ed.

Deaths dur­ing the last three sea­sons were five, six, and five, he said.

The min­is­ter said soon-to-be moth­ers will be coun­selled about the vac­cine dur­ing their an­te­na­tal care.

Flu sea­son be­gins in Oc­to­ber and ends in May but the min­is­ter said they re­ceived the ship­ment of vac­cines one month ear­li­er so the launch was moved up.

“It will be ir­re­spon­si­ble of us, know­ing we have the vac­cines and not giv­ing it to the pub­lic and we don’t know whether this year will be a more ac­tive year...it will be un­eth­i­cal and ir­re­spon­si­ble to have vac­cines and have peo­ple dy­ing of in­fluen­za,” he said.

Deyals­ingh said the in­fluen­za vac­cine would be avail­able for any mem­ber of the pub­lic at health cen­tres and he al­so an­nounced that mass vac­ci­na­tion sites will be an­nounced soon.

He said oth­er than preg­nant women, peo­ple with chron­ic ill­ness­es should take the vac­cine. This in­clud­ed those with res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases, di­a­betes, heart dis­ease, chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease, liv­er dis­ease, obe­si­ty, can­cer and im­muno­sup­pressed in­di­vid­u­als.

Chil­dren aged six months to five years, health­care work­ers, and adults 65 years and old­er were al­so ad­vised to take the shot.

Ac­cord­ing to the man­ag­er of the Ex­pand­ed Pro­gramme on Im­mu­ni­sa­tion in the Min­istry of Health, Grace Sookc­hand, 75,000 vac­cines have been pro­cured. The same amount was or­dered last sea­son and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 53,000 vac­cines were ad­min­is­tered.
Each vac­cine costs US$4.45, which con­verts to TT$30.18. The 75,000 dos­es cost TT$226,3500.

“We have pro­cured the quadri­va­lent in­fluen­za vac­cine and this pro­tects against four strains of in­fluen­za,” the nurse ex­plained.

She said the vac­cine com­po­si­tion was up­dat­ed an­nu­al­ly to match the cir­cu­lat­ing strain.