Vac­ci­na­tion Week, which is be­ing ob­served from to­mor­row across the Amer­i­c­as, is over­shad­owed by the re­cent warn­ing from the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) that there could be a resur­gence of some in­fec­tious dis­eases in the re­gion.

The clear­est in­di­ca­tor of this is the re-emer­gence of measles, which was de­clared elim­i­nat­ed more than two decades ago but has been on the rise, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Unit­ed States.

In ad­di­tion, while not an im­me­di­ate threat, ex­perts say a close watch should be kept on po­liomyelitis, rubel­la, and neona­tal tetanus — dis­eases elim­i­nat­ed in the 1980s and 2000s that could resurge un­less health au­thor­i­ties can re­verse low vac­ci­na­tion trends in many parts of the re­gion.

So far, measles hasn’t crept back in­to the T&T pop­u­la­tion but it is im­por­tant to avoid com­pla­cen­cy. With glob­al cas­es on the rise, in­creas­ing by 18 per cent from 2021 to 2022 and deaths up by 43 per cent with 37 coun­tries ex­pe­ri­enc­ing large out­breaks in 2022, there is good rea­son to be on guard.

For the Min­istry of Health, with its of­ten-stat­ed goal of hav­ing every cit­i­zen ful­ly im­mu­nised, Vac­ci­na­tion Week is an op­por­tu­ni­ty not to be missed. This is as good a time as any to roll out in­ten­sive in­for­ma­tion and im­mu­ni­sa­tion cam­paigns aimed at re­duc­ing the risk of out­breaks.

Since there is al­ready in place an Ex­pand­ed Pro­gramme on Im­mu­niza­tion, the in­fra­struc­ture is cur­rent­ly avail­able for a spe­cial cam­paign aimed at those peo­ple who are not ac­cess­ing the free vac­ci­na­tions pro­vid­ed in the pub­lic health sys­tem.

This is crit­i­cal in this post-COVID pe­ri­od be­cause it is still nec­es­sary to de­bunk the vac­ci­na­tion mis­con­cep­tions and dis­in­for­ma­tion be­ing wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly on so­cial me­dia.

The drop in vac­ci­na­tion rates can be di­rect­ly linked to a 1998 pa­per pub­lished in The Lancet by An­drew Wake­field claim­ing the MMR shot caused autism. Years af­ter that pa­per was de­bunked and re­tract­ed by the jour­nal, vac­cine fears per­sist.

That dis­in­for­ma­tion start­ed tak­ing hold in T&T at the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and is still be­ing spread, con­tribut­ing to vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy and a de­crease in con­fi­dence in vac­ci­na­tions.

Add to that vac­ci­na­tion com­pla­cen­cy, with many peo­ple lulled in­to a false sense of com­fort be­cause im­mu­ni­sa­tion cov­er­age is rel­a­tive­ly high in T&T – above 90 per cent for the ma­jor­i­ty of vac­cines, nev­er mind that the goal should be above 95 per cent cov­er­age to pro­tect against out­breaks, par­tic­u­lar­ly of pre­vi­ous­ly elim­i­nat­ed dis­eases.

This is a prob­lem that pre­dates the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Dur­ing the 2009 H1N1 pan­dem­ic, less than two per cent of the pop­u­la­tion was vac­ci­nat­ed with the in­fluen­za vac­cine be­cause many did not con­sid­er that dis­ease to be more than a mild in­fec­tion.

But among the biggest chal­lenges for pub­lic health of­fi­cials here is the wor­ry­ing dip in rou­tine child­hood vac­ci­na­tions and the in­creas­ing risk of trav­ellers bring­ing measles and oth­er pre­vi­ous­ly erad­i­cat­ed dis­eases in­to this coun­try.

To coun­ter­act these trends, there must be on­go­ing ef­forts to de­bunk the dis­in­for­ma­tion with ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion from trust­ed sources to help in­di­vid­u­als dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween truth and myth.

The best way to in­crease con­fi­dence in vac­cines is with con­tin­u­ous cam­paigns to re­in­force cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion along with im­mu­ni­sa­tion dri­ves.

The Min­istry of Health, which did a de­cent job at both dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, ought to re­vive these ef­forts to stave off fu­ture out­breaks.