Sascha Wil­son

Con­cerned about the re­cent re-emer­gence of the po­lio virus in Lon­don and New York, Health Min­is­ter Ter­ence Deyals­ingh is now urg­ing par­ents to en­sure that their chil­dren re­ceive their child­hood im­mu­ni­sa­tions.

Speak­ing at the launch of the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty’s True Vol­un­tary Blood Cam­paign yes­ter­day, the min­is­ter said cas­es in de­vel­oped coun­tries was a scary de­vel­op­ment.

“On the heels of COVID, then came mon­key­pox and on the heels of mon­key­pox is now com­ing a very scary de­vel­op­ment in New York. I don’t know if any­one read the in­ter­na­tion­al news this morn­ing, but I start­ed to alert the coun­try a month ago that the po­lio virus was found in sew­er­age in Lon­don and yes­ter­day, New York City record­ed its first po­lio cas­es in a decade in a young adult who is now paral­ysed,” Deyals­ingh said.

The Min­is­ter not­ed, how­ev­er, that there has been de­cline in child­hood im­mu­ni­sa­tion in T&T dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“Our child­hood vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme, es­pe­cial­ly for po­lio, we are one to two per cent per­cent­age points off from where we should be. The min­i­mal re­quire­ment for herd im­mu­ni­ty is 95 per cent. We used to at­tain that pri­or to COVID be­cause to get in­to school, you had to show proof of child­hood vac­ci­na­tions be­ing a part of the pro­gramme. Be­cause schools were closed for two years, many par­ents did not have to go through that rigour and our MMR, yel­low fever, po­lio vac­ci­na­tion rates dropped. We went on a dri­ve and we made up that,” Deyals­ingh said.

How­ev­er, with the re­cent emer­gence of live po­lio virus in Lon­don and the New York case, Deyals­ingh urged par­ents who have not start­ed the vac­ci­na­tion regime for their chil­dren for po­lio and oth­er child­hood dis­eases to “please get on board and start the pro­gramme.”

“It will be a sad day if in a coun­try of 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple, which is rel­a­tive­ly small, we get a case of measles, mumps, rubel­la, yel­low fever, whop­ping cough or po­lio. We don’t want to see that here.”

Deyals­ingh al­so not­ed that the an­ti-COVID-19 vac­cine cam­paign is now in­flu­enc­ing peo­ple against tak­ing vac­cines in gen­er­al.

“I am ad­vis­ing par­ents and chil­dren to not give in and not pay un­due at­ten­tion to the an­ti-vac­cine sen­ti­ment against the COVID-19 vac­cine for chil­dren be­tween the ages of five and 11 be­ing per­pe­trat­ed by five in­di­vid­u­als who should know bet­ter,” he said.

“The mes­sage is that the un­sus­pect­ing pub­lic, the un­sus­pect­ing par­ent, is not mak­ing the dis­tinc­tion be­tween what they are hear­ing about COVID-19 vac­cines and they are in­ter­pret­ing that in­for­ma­tion and trans­pos­ing it to vac­cines in gen­er­al and that is the col­lat­er­al dam­age that the an­ti-vaxxers are hav­ing around the world, not on­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

What is Po­lio

Ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion, Po­lio (po­liomyelitis) is a high­ly in­fec­tious dis­ease caused by a virus. It in­vades the ner­vous sys­tem and can cause to­tal paral­y­sis in a mat­ter of hours. The virus is trans­mit­ted by per­son-to-per­son spread main­ly through the fae­cal-oral route or, less fre­quent­ly, by a com­mon ve­hi­cle (for ex­am­ple, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed wa­ter or food) and mul­ti­plies in the in­tes­tine.

Ini­tial symp­toms are fever, fa­tigue, headache, vom­it­ing, stiff­ness of the neck and pain in the limbs. One in 200 in­fec­tions leads to ir­re­versible paral­y­sis (usu­al­ly in the legs). Among those paral­ysed, 5–10% die when their breath­ing mus­cles be­come im­mo­bilised.