Vaccines Will Not Kill Your Children- Aceng Assures Parents

By Max Patrick Ocaido

Minister of Health Jane Ruth Aceng has encouraged parents to continue being compliant to government’s immunization campaigns because the vaccines are safe.

Ministry of Health has for the last 3weeks been very busy rallying and conducting countrywide immunization campaign against Measles-Rubella diseases amidst some resistance from the public who discouraged others from taking their kids for immunization on ground that the vaccines will kill their children.

While speaking at the event organized by Rotary Club of Muyenga to celebrate World Polio Day on Thursday evening, minister Aceng urged parents to ignore the ill-advice from some sadists and rather take their children for immunization whenever government calls upon.

“These vaccines will not kill our children. It is unfortunate that those people who post this bad information sneak in and vaccinate their kids. When your kid falls sick you will not have millions for treatment yet preventive services are being provided,” Aceng said.

“Some people are posting false information about the vaccines; nobody wants to kill Africans as alleged. In fact, the West fear Africans migrating there, that is why they want us to invest in our kids so that they become productive.”

Aceng assured Ugandans that vaccines are normally tested by World Health Organisation (WHO) before they are released to them for administering.

Whereas Uganda has achieved the SDG goal of reducing child mortality mainly through vaccination, Aceng says that there is still a big number of unvaccinated children totaling to about 1.5m while over 300,000 children are under-vaccinated.

“This is still a big problem because if one kid gets infected then the rest will also get infected when they are not vaccinated. In a place like Kole [in Northern Uganda], people don’t believe in anything; they only eat and sleep, they don’t even bath. That is why Rotary must continue to reach out to the people to embrace vaccination,” she said.

Aceng said that in the recently concluded Measles-Rubella campaign, over 7.3m children were vaccinated against Polio out of the targeted 8.2m. She says that the target was not met after the ministry ran out of Polio vaccines.

For the case of Measles-Rubella campaign, Aceng said that the ministry performed well exceeding their target by 5%.

“Our target on Measles-Rubella campaign was to vaccinate 18.1m children. But already we have vaccinated 18,777,007 children. One thing that will move Uganda to middle income status is good health because healthy people are productive,” she said.

Christine Kawooya, Rotary Club President said that a tremendous progress has been registered in eliminating Polio out of the globe with only Polio type 1 still remaining after Polio 2 and 3 were wiped out. Kawooya said they have been able to contain polio through perseverance, advocacy and fundraising campaigns.

Statistics show that polio cases have reduced by 99.9%, from 350,000 cases in 125 countries in 1988 to just 33 cases caused by the wild virus in 2018. Only two countries continue to report cases of wild polio that is Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“The infrastructure we helped build to end polio is also being used to treat and prevent other diseases and create lasting impact in other areas of public health,” Kawooya said.

Annet Kisaakye, International advisor on new vaccines at WHO urged parents to sideline myths about vaccines and continue taking their children for immunization.

“There is still much misconception on the vaccines. We are no longer seeing paralyzed children because of white polio vaccine. So we need to continue doing so. The greatest gift to give to your kids is to them for vaccination before you throw a 10m birthday party for that one year old,” Kisaakye said.

Uganda last registered polio case in 2010 in Amuru district.