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CATHERINE W GICHUKI
DOHA
A national immunisation campaign against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) is scheduled to take place from October 17 to November 14. The campaign targets some 294,000 children aged between one and 13.
The vaccine will be administered to children at health centres as well as independent, private and community schools. Twenty-two private health centres will also take part in the campaign. The vaccine will be given free-of-charge.
The campaign is organised by the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC), Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), Qatar Petroleum and Sidra Medical and Research Center.
Officials from MoPH's Department of Public Health, PHCC, HMC and Ministry of Education and Higher Education are working with experts from WHO and Centre for Disease Control and Prevention-Atlanta to prepare for the campaign. Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday Sheikh Dr Mohammed al Thani said even those children have had this vaccine before need to get it administered again.
"Those who have already been vaccinated can get it again for optimum protection. The minimum is two times."
According to Sheikh Mohammed, while many expatriates might have got their children immunised in their countries, an additional dose would only increase efficacy of the vaccine."One or two doses are not enough. The third is important as we strive to eliminate measles by 2020", he said.
Sheikh Mohammed added,"Our slogan is 'catch up, keep up and follow-up', meaning that you need to catch as many people as you can to get the vaccination, keep a good number of recipients, and follow-up with the vaccinations through campaigns.
Emphasising that the vaccine is mandatory for children, the MoPH Director of Health Protection & Communicable Disease Control Department Hamad al Rumaihi urged parents to fill up the consent forms that would be sent to them in due course, adding that"If a child has medical contraindications, the parent should reject the vaccine and also attach the medical reports of the child."
Rumaihi added that 22 private health centres will also participate in the campaign whose names will be released just before the launch of the campaign.
It is worth mentioning here that the number of confirmed cases of measles this year is 22. According to Rumaihi, Qatar has the third highest number of measles cases in EMRO region as per a WHO report.
However, the incidence rate and number of measles cases have dropped rapidly in the last few years, from 160 cases in 2012 to 18 in 2015. Last year 21 cases of mumps, 7 cases of rubella were reported.
For his part, PHCC Assistant Regional Director Dr Mohammed Ayyad said that during the campaign they will cover around 92,000 children aged between one and 4 years at health centres and others in schools."We will have two separate teams for health centres and schools. The total staff that will be assigned to do this task in the three weeks will be around 400 including physicians, nurses, pharmacists, logistics, among others."
