“Vaccination Coalition “It is a Dominican initiative that arises from the board of directors of the Dominican Society of Vaccinology (SDV) in the person of its president, the distinguished pediatrician Dr. José Brea Del Castillo, an expert in vaccines and past president of the Dominican Society of Pediatrics. Initiative that has been motivated by the decline in all vaccinations in the DR and in the rest of the world, during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Coalition seeks to integrate the largest number of actors that have to do with the prevention of immunopreventable diseases: Ministry of Public Health, national congress, schools, colleges, universities and their medical schools, hospitals, opinion leaders and national and international organizations. that, in some way, have an impact on Public Health policies in our country.
In this line, recently, the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM) hosted this initiative at its CSD School of Medicine, with the “International Day for Vaccination”, in which all sectors, personalities and national organizations participated. and international that were summoned, and that included the term medical students of their School, to create in them, awareness regarding this important topic.
On the other hand, it must be said that the DR still does not have a “Vaccine Law” a tool that already exists in most of the most developed countries and in others very similar to ours. However, a vaccine law has already been approved in the Chamber of Senators in the National Congress, which awaits approval in the Chamber of Deputies before being sent to the Executive Branch for promulgation.
With this law, it is expected that the Expanded Immunization Program (PAI) will have an allocation in the nation’s budget that guarantees the necessary funds for vaccination for all. That the vaccination record be a digital, electronic and unique tool, and that the most humble and vulnerable child and adult have the same vaccines available to them as the child and adult of the highest socio-economic level. While acknowledging that, in recent times, the MSP has made great efforts and new vaccines have been incorporated into the official immunization record.
The vaccine law also provides for the creation of a “Permanent and Independent Advisory Committee of Vaccine Experts”, so that the decision to vaccinate, when and how to do it, does not depend on the good will of some people. These are some of the guidelines of this law. An instrument that we should soon have as a demonstration that Dominicans, when WE WANT, WE CAN.
