The vaccines are too many for our babies – Nursing mothers cry

Correspondence from Eastern Region

Nursing mothers in the North and South Dayi Districts of the Volta Region have expressed worrying concerns that the needle-pricking on their babies in the name of immunisation are becoming too many for their babies.

According to them, their babies give them sleepless nights and discomfort due to the incessant cries from the babies as a result of the many injections given them during their periodic weighing sessions.

Health officers at both the North and South Dayi disclosed this to GhanaWeb during an interview about the ongoing piloting of the Malaria Vaccine Implementation Programme (MVIP) in those two Districts.

Speaking to GhanaWeb, the South Dayi District Health Director, Ms. Patience Nunoo, disclosed that at the initial stages of the malaria vaccine immunisation, many nursing mothers were reluctant to get their children immunised with the vaccine because they complained about too many vaccinations on their babies which make some of them run high temperature and thus, bring discomfort to them.

According to the Health Director, some of the parents revealed that the numerous vaccinations are the reason some of them were reluctant to bring their children to weighing sessions to be immunised.

On his part, the Disease Control Officer who doubles as the Coordinator for the Expanded Programmes for Immunisation (EPI) for North Dayi District, Michael Eshun, explained that the vaccines the children take are BCG, OPV, IPV, Rota, PCV, RTSS, Measles rubella and other two vaccines.

He further explained that the vaccines come in different kinds which the children will have to take from their birth to when they mature.

“There are some of them; the child has to take them in three sessions; 1,2 and 3. So when you break all three sessions down that means the child has to take 23 vaccinations before that child will get to their maturity age.

“Some are oral, some are injectable. That is why some of the mothers are complaining and because of that, they didn’t want to accept the malaria vaccine too. But upon education, now all those parents are understanding.

“We have made them understand that it is not pain that we want their children to go through but that we want their children to be immune to all those diseases around us.

“It is better to give your child pain to be immune against certain diseases now than to give them no pain and become vulnerable to those diseases and spending more money on that particular child, sending him or her to hospital here and there. We have explained to them and they understood us,” Michael Eshun said.

Childhood immunisation has been identified as one of the most cost-effective interventions in healthcare delivery.

Experts aver that significant gains have been made through immunisation resulting in a reduction in the burden of vaccine-preventable illness globally.

Currently, more than 680,000 malaria vaccines have been administered to Ghanaian babies. It is expected that about one million doses would have been administered by end of 2021 through the advocacy effort by the African Media in Malaria Research Network (AMMREN).

In Ghana, for instance, immunisation has been a core public health activity through the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) since1985 and it is said that vaccine administration at recommended age is important to eliminate a child’s risk for target diseases.

Surprisingly, when GhanaWeb set out to town to find out from some nursing mothers in the two Districts, all those interviewed rather were oblivious about the kinds of vaccination given to their babies.

They were unable to tell if a particular vaccine given to their child was against malaria, measles, polio or whichever. For such parents, they were much okay with any vaccine given to their babies.