Yellow Fever vaccines to arrive next week
Minister of Public Health, Ms Volda Lawrence
Minister of Public Health, Ms Volda Lawrence

-Guyana’s stock is below critical level

Minister of Public Health, Volda Lawrence has noted that while Guyana has to implement some tough temporary short-term measures to tackle the outbreak of Yellow Fever in Brazil, the situation is expected to return to normalcy when the shipment of the vaccines arrives in the country sometime next week.

In a letter to the media, Minister Lawrence revealed that Guyana’s stock of the Yellow Fever vaccine is “below its critical level” and as a temporary measure, the Ministry of Citizenship in collaboration with Port Health was tasked to surveillance activity on the borders with Brazil and Suriname. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was requested to alert the Guyana Consulate and the “relevant diplomatic agencies in neighbouring countries about those measures”.

She said that Guyana’s current challenge is to provide the critical vaccines for nationals travelling to neighbouring Suriname and that part of the solution can be a decision by the Surinamese administration to relax its demands that all Guyanese be immunised against Yellow Fever as one pre-condition for entry.

“I proffer this because I have been reliably informed that THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A YELLOW FEVER OUTBREAK IN GUYANA although the mosquito which transmits YF is in Guyana and that we are yet to confirm that animals here are free from the disease,” Minister Lawrence said.

The Public Health Minister pointed out how global manufacturers behave when there is a Yellow Fever outbreak and since the shortage of the vaccines in Africa.

She noted that manufacturers of the critical Yellow Fever vaccine are few: outside of the United States which manufactured the vaccine for domestic use, there are only five other manufacturers.

These are Bio-Mabguinhos Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Institute of Poliomyelitis and Viral Encephalitides in Moscow, Russia; Pasteur Institute of Dakar in Dakar, Senegal; Berna, in Berne, Switzerland (formerly produced at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, Germany, and Sanofi Pasteur in Lyon, France.

She recalled that whenever there is a Yellow Fever outbreak in any part of the world, manufacturers, historically, divert their supplies, in an effort to prevent its spread to other parts of the globe.

According to Minister Lawrence, Guyana’s workers at the 103 immunisation sites nation-wide have always been doing their jobs to fight vaccine-preventable diseases. During the last five years, some 98 per cent of Guyanese children under the age of 5 have been immunised against YF.

In Lethem, Region 9 (Upper Takutu/Upper Essequibo), one of the vulnerable areas to the current outbreak in Brazil, the figure is the same for adults according to MOPH records.

Since June of 2016, the Ministry has dispensed some 20,000 doses of Yellow Fever vaccines to the adult population of the country. Currently, Guyana has Yellow Fever vaccines to immunise all children below the age of 5, for emergencies involving adults and for unimmunised government and other officials who must travel overseas.

She reminded Guyanese that the Yellow Fever vaccine is now valid for life as of 2016 and is no longer required to be taken every ten years.

 

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