This Friday, through a press conference, the Ministry of Health said that so far there is a confirmed case of measles and there are 300 suspects in various parts of the country. Due to this, the Ministry of Education and Sciences (MEC) will request the vaccination booklet due to the alert for this disease, starting next Monday.
“It is important that parents know that from Monday the teacher and the director of the institution will be requesting the vaccination book for the corresponding control and if they do not have the complete system, Health will be informed,” said Alcira Sosa, vice minister of the MEC, this morning.
Consequently, they will notify the Family Health units or the district hospital in the area, for which they call on parents or guardians in the first weeks of classes that begin on Monday, February 20 at the country level.
In that regard, Public Health urges children to be immunized against this highly contagious disease after reporting a case in Hohenau, Itapua department. They point out that the departments of Central, Itapúa, Cordillera and Alto Paraná are the most vulnerable areas.
Dr. Héctor Castro, director of the Expanded Immunization Program (PAI), indicated that the most affected population is children who are going to start a new school year. “An unvaccinated, unimmunized population obviously represents a dangerous situation for the spread of an outbreak,” he said this morning.
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They argued that the vaccination level in Paraguay has very low coverage in some cases, which represents a risk of measles returning to the country, in the case of a disease that has been controlled in the past.
For his part, Édgar Ríos, defense attorney in Civil, Childhood and Adolescence, stated that if the parents oppose complying with the norm, the criminal area is notified and an investigation is carried out and sanctions could be reached.
He added that the vaccine law speaks of the obligation and says that parents, guardians, will be responsible, otherwise they are exposed to sanctions. “We will talk to parents and explain the importance of vaccination. There is an obligation, the parents can be sanctioned”, said Ríos.
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For her part, Dr. Ana Campuzano asked parents to take their children to be immunized at any health care center in the country for free and assured that the Paraguayan Pediatric Society calls to promote that all children in the country be vaccinated. “The effectiveness of the vaccine is much higher than 90%, if I, dad, do not vaccinate my children, having the vaccine free of charge, I as a parent or teacher who does not look at the vaccine booklet, am responsible for that child not being vaccinated,” he said.
