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Vaccinations should benefit teenagers and adults

Among adolescents, adults and ancients, vaccination coverage percentage is very low and almost in zero, this is a big problem because it leaves the doors open to the reappearance of several illness in the country.

Almost everyone under one year of age are protected against diseases such as polio, measles and whooping cough, which is under a 92% immunization coverage. The immunization falls to 65% in people with ages between 10 and 15.

According to the last report of the Nation state, it is essential to determine whether this situation is reflecting more than just a problem in the register, they force with controls on possible additional factors that might be dangerous to open the emergence of disease outbreaks and the control of the system health .

The medical manager of the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS), Rosa Climent Martin stressed that the country is making efforts to protect the population with vaccines.

Since 2004, for example, about 300,000 adults older than 65 years were vaccinated against the gripe virus.

In this year, the fifth campaign is in February, and the State will invest $ 1.4 million.

Also, Climent said, that it is being vaccinated against whooping cough to moms of all newborns. This involves the purchase of more than 70,000 doses of the vaccine.

The Minister of Health, Maria Luisa Avila Agüero, said that there is a vaccination plan for human development which introduces four new vaccines in the scheme.

Moreover, she reported that they were working on health promotion to raise awareness of the need for vaccines and trying to make a complete scheme.

We want to move from the old concept where the tradition says that vaccines were only for children, to the new concept that says that vaccination is for the whole family. One example is the "strategy cocoon", which protects the mother and the child against whooping cough, explained the Minister.

The State of the Nation highlighted those efforts, they want to include in the scheme vaccines against diseases like chickenpox, pneumococcal (responsible for meningitis) and rotavirus (severe diarrhea).

 

Daniela Unfried 
   
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