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Monday, March 17, 2025

Ministry not surprised by pregnant women’s delay in vaccinations

by

Derek Achong
1285 days ago
20210910
Dr Adesh Sirjusingh

Dr Adesh Sirjusingh

RISHI RAGOONATH

The Min­istry of Health was not sur­prised by the lack of an ini­tial rush of preg­nant women com­ing for­ward to be vac­ci­nat­ed for COVID-19 when it ex­tend­ed the op­tion to them late last month. 

Ap­pear­ing on Aakash Vani 106.5 FM’s Morn­ing Pan­chay­at show with host Satesh Ma­habir yes­ter­day morn­ing, the Min­istry’s Di­rec­tor of Women’s Health Dr Adesh Sir­jus­ingh said that he was not im­me­di­ate­ly con­cerned that on­ly ap­prox­i­mate­ly 350 preg­nant women have been vac­ci­nat­ed since vac­ci­na­tions were ex­tend­ed to them on Au­gust 25. 

Dr Sir­jus­ingh sug­gest­ed that the ap­par­ent­ly low rate was pos­si­bly due to the fact that preg­nant women, who are past the first trimester of their preg­nan­cy (12 weeks), are re­quired to con­sult with their pri­ma­ry health care pro­fes­sion­al be­fore be­ing el­i­gi­ble to take a vac­cine. He sug­gest­ed that the fig­ures are like­ly to im­prove af­ter four weeks. 

“So I would look at the num­bers af­ter a month to get a bet­ter gauge,” Dr Sir­jus­ingh said. 

He al­so claimed that the gen­er­al up­take of vac­cines by preg­nant women in for­eign coun­tries with high vac­ci­na­tion rates was 40 per cent. 

“It sounds like a low num­ber. We don’t ex­pect a high up-tick in com­par­i­son to the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion,” Dr Sir­jus­ingh said. 

Dr Sir­jus­ingh ex­plained that while da­ta was lim­it­ed at the start of the pan­dem­ic, re­cent stud­ies in­di­cate that there is a high fre­quen­cy of pre-term and still­born births with preg­nant women, who con­tract COVID-19 es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the sec­ond half of their preg­nan­cy. 

There were al­so in­ci­dents of in­fect­ed preg­nant women suf­fer­ing from heart dis­ease and high blood pres­sure. 

Dr Sir­jus­ingh not­ed that COVID-19 had not been shown to se­ri­ous­ly af­fect ba­bies if their moth­ers con­tract­ed the virus when preg­nant. 

“Luck­i­ly, COVID has not been found to af­fect the ba­bies in terms of caus­ing any­thing like fe­tal anom­alies as some­times hap­pens with some virus­es. There is a small risk of moth­er-to-child trans­mis­sion,” he said. 

“That is ex­treme­ly small at this time but we have not seen any di­rect harm to the ba­by ex­cept the still­births and pre-term labour,” he added. 

Dr Sir­jus­ingh stat­ed that of the 500 preg­nant women, who con­tract­ed the virus since the start of the pan­dem­ic, the ma­jor­i­ty would have been ex­posed this year. 

Three per cent of those in­fect­ed re­quired hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion, with on­ly one, who was in­fect­ed in late preg­nan­cy, dy­ing af­ter giv­ing birth. 

Dr Sir­jus­ingh was care­ful to note that preg­nant women were not more sus­cep­ti­ble to con­tract­ing the virus. 

“COVID-19 does not seek out preg­nant women...You are just at risk as the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion,” he said. 

He sought to dis­pel mis­in­for­ma­tion about the vac­cine’s ef­fect on preg­nant women as he not­ed that the Pfiz­er/BioN­Tech vac­cine was on­ly se­lect­ed af­ter it was grant­ed World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion ap­proval for preg­nant women. 

He stat­ed that af­ter the vac­cine is ad­min­is­tered it is quick­ly elim­i­nat­ed from the body. 

“What is left be­hind is the sys­tem for man­u­fac­tur­ing an­ti­bod­ies. The vac­cine at no point in time gets to the ba­by,” he said. 

He not­ed that the same ap­plied to breast­feed­ing moth­ers. 

“The on­ly thing that goes to the ba­by is the an­ti­bod­ies that are pro­duced. So we can ac­tu­al­ly pro­tect the moth­er and ba­by in a sense,” he said. 

While Dr Sir­jus­ingh ad­mit­ted that mi­nor side ef­fects such as pain at the vac­ci­na­tion site and headaches are nor­mal as in the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion and peri­cardi­tis and my­ocardi­tis as­so­ci­at­ed with the Pfiz­er/BioN­Tech vac­cine was on­ly seen in young males and not with preg­nant women. 

Dr Sir­jus­ingh al­so de­nied that vac­ci­na­tions af­fects fer­til­i­ty but ad­mit­ted that it may tem­porar­i­ly af­fect men­stru­a­tion like oth­er stress­ful events.

“I can say there is ab­solute­ly no truth in vac­cines af­fect­ing your ovaries or re­pro­duc­tive sys­tem,” Dr Sir­jus­ingh said.

He not­ed that the min­istry sought to make the vac­ci­na­tion process quick and easy for preg­nant women as once they have a rec­om­men­da­tion from their doc­tor they would be fast-tracked at spe­cif­ic vac­ci­na­tion sites ad­min­is­ter­ing the Pfiz­er vac­cine. 


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