The EU buys vaccines against measles, polio and covid for the more than three million refugees in Ukraine | Society

The EU has started the purchase of vaccines against infectious diseases such as polio, measles, tuberculosis and also the coronavirus to be distributed among the countries that host the more than three million refugees who have left Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion of the country by Russia, half of them children. This was announced on Tuesday by the Commissioner for Health of the European Commission, the Cypriot Stella Kyriakides, in a videoconference meeting held with the Ministers of Health of the Member States.

Although the aid plan is broader and also provides for the immediate assistance of sick refugees in neighboring countries and hospitals in the rest of the EU, there is concern that the largest movement of refugees in Europe since World War II will cause a strong outbreak of the coronavirus among them –only 35% of Ukrainians had completed the guideline at the start of the war—and favor the circulation of other pathogens that complicate the care required by those fleeing the conflict.

“Vaccination coverage in Ukraine is very low for vaccine-preventable diseases, especially among children,” Kyriakides explained. Childhood vaccination against viruses such as measles and polio, which 15 years ago were at high levels in the country (above 90% of children), has collapsed over the last decade, in a phenomenon that experts attribute both to the shortcomings of the health system and to the distrust of citizens with government policies.

According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), just 31% of children were correctly immunized with triple viral (measles, rubella and mumps) in 2016, “the lowest percentage in the European region and one of the lowest in the world”. Against polio, only 56% of children received the third recommended dose that year.

With these low coverages, Ukraine has suffered in recent years the worst measles outbreaks in Europe in decades. Between 2017 and 2019 alone, more than 100,000 people fell ill in the country and 31 died, mostly children, according to research published in the European Journal of Public Health. And in the months prior to the war, two cases of polio and twenty asymptomatic infected have been detected in the west of the country, the first since 2010 on the continent. The WHO and the Government of Ukraine launched a special campaign on February 1 which planned to vaccinate 140,000 children against this disease in a first phase that has been interrupted by the invasion. The same fate has suffered the public health programs developed in the country by entities such as Doctors Without Borders, which are now trying to help the weakened Ukrainian health system in the medical care of those who have remained in the country.

Although the response of the Ukrainian authorities to the outbreaks of infectious diseases had managed to raise coverage to nearly 80% of children in the last two years, this percentage is still far from the 95% goal that allows group immunity to be achieved and it remains at very low levels (close to 60%) in some areas of the country, according to the WHO.

“Large movements of people can favor the circulation of viruses due to the conditions in which they are produced. If the host countries have high coverage, such as Spain, the risk is reduced to the refugees themselves. In those where these are smaller, such as some in Eastern Europe neighboring Ukraine, the vulnerable population is larger”, explains Quique Bassat, an ICREA epidemiologist and researcher at the ISGlobal institute in Barcelona.

“With the coronavirus, circulation continues to be high throughout Europe and the risk of the unvaccinated population is that they develop serious conditions. With diseases like measles, outbreaks that were already in Eastern Europe can get bigger. The best response would be to act as is already done with risk groups: promote vaccination and take advantage of refugee care centers, which allow you to ask about the vaccination status and, where appropriate, immunize many people in a single space and in a short time. time,” adds Bassat.

In this line, the latest weekly bulletin on communicable diseases from the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC)published last Friday, included the recommendation to consider the vaccination of refugee children against polio and measles as a “priority”, as well as the promotion of the coronavirus vaccine among adults.

Stella Kyriakides detailed in her speech on Tuesday the package of measures that the EU is putting in place to care for refugees, “many of whom are vulnerable people such as pregnant women, children, the elderly or disabled, the chronically ill and with mental health problems”.

EU aid to refugees includes immediate first care in Ukraine’s neighboring countries to make a first assessment and address urgent health needs, for which medical teams, equipped beds and other resources are being sent. In the most serious cases, the EU has prepared “more than 10,000 beds in hospitals in the Member States for pediatric patients, neonates, cancer patients, people with burns and all those who require intensive care,” explains the European Commission. This group includes the 25 children with cancer who landed in Madrid last Friday to be treated in four Community hospitals and another group of minors who traveled from Poland last week to be treated in Italy.

The Ministry of Health and the communities have prepared the instructions documents to offer the necessary assistance to the Ukrainians who are arriving in Spain, among whose points is the review of the vaccination status. The Government’s plan has a capacity of 21,000 places, which plans to expand with a bag of families that offer to accommodate more people. Although some refugees have been entering Spain in recent weeks by their own means, destined for the homes of family and friends, there will be four large reception centers in Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Alicante and Malaga for the rest, in whose management entities such as the Red Cross, the Spanish Commission for Refugee Assistance (CEAR) and ACCEM.

Raquel Santos, state coordinator of the CEAR inclusion area, explains that the priority is to guarantee that new arrivals have access to the health system. “The first thing we do is ask them if they suffer from any chronic disease and need medication or have any other problems. In this case they are referred to hospital emergency services. The rest of the people are informed of the procedures they must follow to obtain the health card and the vaccination calendar in primary care centres. They are people who have been granted temporary protection and thus have access to public services”, she explains.

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