The URJC Chair of Vaccination has organized the Extraordinary Scientific Session, ‘Vaccination, the challenge of all and for all’.
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Raúl García Hémonnet
Within the framework of the ‘vaccination week’ that the WHO always celebrates in the last week of April, the Sanofi-Aventis Chair Rey Juan Carlos University for Vaccine Research has organized this online meeting (due to the Pandemic) in which They have brought together important experts in vaccination and in different medical specialties.
The objective of the conference was, in the words of the director of the chair and professor in Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Ángel Gil de Miguel, “to draw attention to the importance of universal access to vaccines”, especially in a context of pandemic such as the one we are living with COVID-19, “since we can only cut the spread of the virus with coverage of 90% in all countries, if it continues to transmit it is easier for new variants to appear, such as that of India,” says the URJC professor who adds that, in addition to the pandemic, “in developing countries, vaccination is the most important tool to reduce infant mortality, especially”.
The voice of the specialists
The day was structured in two sessions. In the first, moderated by the journalist specializing in health, Alipio Gutiérrez, medical professionals from different specialties participated, such as Dr. José Luis Contreras, from the Spanish Association of Pediatrics; Dr. Esther Redondo Gimeno from the Spanish Society of Primary Care Physicians; Dr. Isabel Gimeno, from the Spanish Society of General and Family Physicians, Dr. Amos García Rojas, from the Spanish Vaccination Society and Dr. Diego Vargas, general director of Health Assistance and Health Results of the Andalusian Health Service.
The experts drew attention to the importance of vaccinating children, especially, according to Ángel Gil de Miguel, when “during the first part of the pandemic vaccinations were canceled due to COVID and there were many parents reluctant to go with their children to health centers ”. These vaccination processes have been recovering for a few months.
Another of the main ideas of the table, says the URJC professor, was “to highlight the importance of vaccination in adulthood and that the calendar is maintained throughout life.” In minors, vaccination reaches levels well above 90%, figures that in adults drop to just over 60. “It is important because diseases such as the flu or pneumococcal disease have serious consequences in adulthood,” says Gil de Miguel.
The point of view of the patients
The second part of the day served to give voice to the patient associations, “we were able to know the opinion of the patients. With COVID, the vaccination of people belonging to risk groups (cancer patients, transplants or with kidney diseases) under 70 years of age has been somewhat neglected. There are people from these groups who are 40 or 50 years old who have not yet been vaccinated, ”says Gil de Miguel.
The day was a success in attendance and showed that health issues, in the context of a global pandemic, arouse great interest. 300 people were connected to the day, half academics from the Royal Academy of Medicine and the other half students from URJC Health Sciences.
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