You may not be familiar with what respiratory syncytial virus is, but 90 percent of children suffer from it. The symptoms may seem like a cold, but in some cases, especially in the first months of a baby, it can lead to pneumonia or bronchiolitis. Surely that name sounds more familiar to you because your own son may have suffered from it or know of a similar case. Now there is a new vaccine that prevents the serious consequences of this virus and will prevent 80 percent of the hospitalizations that have occurred until now. Starting this Sunday it will begin to be administered among the smallest in the region.
The general director of Public Health, Laura Ortiz, and the general director of Care and Quality of Sescam, Montserrat Hernández, have today given the details of what this campaign will be like, which will be the first time it has been done in Castilla-La Mancha. To date, only children with higher risks were vaccinated and with a product that was less effective and also required more doses. Nirsevimab will now be used, which only requires one dose and is not actually a vaccine as such. “It is a medicine, not a vaccine itself, we already provide the defenses, we give an antibody,” explains Laura Ortiz, “we are talking about immunization.”
This ‘vaccine’ will be administered to four population groups. Children who are less than six months old will be vaccinated, that is, all those born on or after April 1. Newborns will also be vaccinated from October 1 to March 31. The third vaccination group will be children who are less than one year old, but who were premature, born before 35 weeks, as they are more vulnerable. The fourth group is made up of children under two years of age with risk factors for lung problems, congenital heart disease or Down syndrome. In almost all cases the vaccine will be administered at the Primary Care health center, except for newborns, who will be administered at the hospital.
Sescam will apply the “active capture” modality for this campaign. That is, it will be the health professionals who will call the families and schedule them, since the vaccine can be made to coincide with the periodic check-ups that babies have to do in the first months of life. “Health professionals are very used to launching vaccination campaigns,” said Hernández.
Laura Ortiz specified that the budget for this campaign will be around 3.2 million euros. It must be remembered that the total amount of vaccines allocated this year by Sescam reaches 30 million. The target population will be around 14,000 children. The campaign is carried out in these fall and winter months because that is when this respiratory virus has the greatest incidence.
Montserrat Hernández clarified that “the reactions of these vaccines are local and in very few cases.” It is estimated that only in 0.7% of cases do local reactions occur, which may be a small rash, which would appear between seven and fourteen days after the injection. Furthermore, like any respiratory virus, it calls on the population to make use of everything that was learned with the coronavirus: “Wash our hands, try to put our elbow when coughing, clean children’s toys.”
2023-09-28 10:58:33
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