This week we talk about one of the crucial topics and it is all about children, and the lives of our future generation. We talk about this topic today due to well-arranged misleading stories circulated over some main media and social media on child vaccination.
According to Chief Epidemiologist Dr Samitha Ginige, the entire child population’s health safety is on the National Immunisation Programme which is one of the best in the world. It commenced in the late seventies. While our neighbouring countries still experience various epidemics that affect children, certain diseases cannot be discovered in Sri Lanka because those diseases were totally eradicated several decades ago from the country. Even there are no child patients who suffer from certain diseases to show to medical students.
But now this golden priceless programme is at risk due to various scientifically unproven ‘stories’ and ‘judgments’ circulated in society. From the beginning of this programme, all vaccines given to children are in accordance with the WHO standards and the quality test is conducted three times before being given to children. Two quality assurance tests are done in two modern laboratories and another quality assurance test done at the MRI after selecting random samples from all the vaccines. All testing is done by fully qualified teams with experts. This vaccine from the same manufacturer had been given to children during the past five years without any problem and 200,000 vaccines from the same vaccine had already been administered so far without any issue.
Dr. Ginige pointed out that the vaccine doses from the same vial used for the dead infant were given to nine other children and 21 children had been vaccinated with the same vaccine on the same day at the same place without any problem. A full scientific investigation is going on now on this incident where a four-month-old infant died the following day after the vaccination.
The most important fact pointed out by Dr. Ginige is the importance of protecting the National Immunisation Programme which has already totally eradicated several diseases from Sri Lanka. Hundreds of children died from various diseases several decades ago and today this situation only exists in our neighbouring countries and not here in Sri Lanka thanks to the National Immunisation Programme. If parents are discouraged from vaccinating their children, the National Immunisation Programme will be severely affected and as a result, the country will be full of sick children with various deadly diseases.
It is very important for our readers to know and understand what was explained by Dr. Ginige because everything now depends on how much people understand any given topic. Therefore let us start to explain his words in detail. For a long time, Sri Lankan people have not seen any child patient who suffers from Polio, Diphtheria, Whooping Cough, Neonatal Tetanus etc because the highest quality vaccines are given to children through the National Immunisation Programme free of charge. Today there are no such patients at least to be shown to medical students. But those diseases are still there in our neighbouring countries.
Measles was also among those eradicated diseases.But nowadays Measles is reported among some children as they are not vaccinated against the disease. It is the sole responsibility of all parents to vaccinate their children according to the timetable given to them by doctors, nurses, and state health institutions just after the birth of their infants.
Sri Lanka has also eradicated Rubella and Malaria, but some Malaria patients reported among the people who return to Sri Lanka from countries where Malaria is still there. No Malaria patient was found in Sri Lanka after eradication.
It is the parents of all Sri Lankan children and infants who should decide whether to listen to the professional doctor who assured them the quality of all vaccines given to children and infants or social media and certain mainstream media with hidden agenda, men and women who pretend that they are ordinary people (but they belong to various political parties trying their best to capture power) and talk about infant deaths.
We like to listen to and believe rumours rather than the truth. It is natural that many people receive an injection or any other medical treatment before death because medical staff never watch them die without any medical treatment.
Sri Lankan people should remember one thing. There are certain groups and individuals who receive huge benefits from the deaths of infants and all the others who die after medical treatment. Sri Lankan people can very clearly see by now who received the benefits of so-called ‘Gas explosions’ reported from all over the country during a certain period just before the so-called ‘Aragalaya’. If we have an iota of brain, we can see the very same scenario now. The ‘Gas’ has been replaced with ‘injections’. This is the only difference. Those vicious individuals and groups never touch several deaths caused daily by road traffic accidents because they cannot use them. It is useless for them to catch one driver because different drivers kill different people at different times.
