The Tribune

By LETRE SWEETING

lsweeting@tribunemedia.net

HEALTH officials said that there has been a decrease in the uptake of all vaccine types, amid the arrival of 1,400 monkeypox vaccines at the Lynden Pindling International Airport yesterday.

Shortly after 3pm, health officials, including Health and Wellness Minister Dr Michael Darville, gathered on the tarmac at LPIA to receive the doses of the vaccine, which were acquired through PAHO’s revolving fund.

The vaccines, which were requested earlier this year, arrived in the capital on British Airways and will be taken to an appropriate storage unit.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Dr Darville said. “I had an idea when it was coming but we wanted to make sure and today on British Airways, the vaccine is here.”

“We would like to thank the Pan American Health Organisation, our partners, to ensure we have the monkeypox vaccine in the country.

“The vaccine will be moved from here to the proper storage site and our teams will be responsible to administer to the high risk groups and individuals that may have been exposed,” Dr Darville said.

“On behalf of the government, we’d like to thank PAHO and the entire team at the Ministry of Health who worked assiduously to ensure that these vaccines arrived in the country.”

Though Dr Darville did not reveal a date for the official rollout of the vaccines, he said the high risk groups will receive doses “very shortly”.

“The official roll out will begin very shortly. We have a strategy on how it’s going to be utilised and we would notify the media exactly how we would roll it out. We have our vaccination consultative committee, which also will play an intricate role, along with our team.

“When we talk about high risk groups we talk about people who might have been potentially exposed. We also have other groups that we believe may be at high risk. This is not like COVID, where everyone needs to be vaccinated. It is basically those groups that are at high risk.”

When asked if there will be another batch of the monkeypox vaccine doses in the future, Dr Darvile said, “We are back in negotiations with PAHO and that possibility exists. That final decision will have to be made along with our entire team. But we are definitely looking at the second batch.”

Meanwhile, Dr Cherita Moxey, Ministry of Health’s acting chief medical officer and coordinator said as with the paediatric doses of the COVID 19 vaccine, which arrived in The Bahamas several weeks ago, the monkeypox vaccines indicate a step in the right direction.

“Like the monkeypox vaccine, its (paediatric doses of the Covid 19 vaccine) arrival here in The Bahamas indicates that the Ministry of Health has taken a very proactive step. There was a lot of demand in the public space for these vaccines,” she said.

“Unfortunately we have not seen the realisation of that demand at our COVID vaccination centres. Right now we’re seeing a percentage of less than one percent of that particular population vaccinated.

“Not only the COVID-19 vaccines, I also want to speak to the fact that we’ve had a decrease in uptake for all vaccine types that are on our national immunisation schedule. So, we really want to encourage persons to get vaccinated for COVID 19, but (also) for the other vaccine preventable diseases that are out there.”

Last month, Dr Marcos Espinal, PAHO’s interim assistant director revealed that batches of monkeypox vaccines are on the way for countries as part of their revolving fund.

PAHO director Dr Carissa F Etienne also said that monkeypox was declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in July and the region is now home to the “highest burden of monkeypox cases worldwide”.

In July, paediatric doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, for children aged five to 11 years arrived in The Bahamas.

Dr Darville said the paediatric vaccinations would be voluntary and not mandatory.