President of the Barbados Association of Medical Practitioners (BAMP) Dr Lynda Williams fears that Barbados is potentially facing an increase in vaccine-preventable diseases.
Williams believed this could be a consequence of health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that routine vaccinations for children in Barbados had already started to suffer.
“Because of health misinformation, routine vaccinations started to suffer. Barbados is one of the countries that had one of the highest uptakes for routine vaccinations for childhood, for [measles, mumps and rubella], polio etc, but we saw that fall from our lofty 90 per cent uptake pre-COVID down to as far as 76 to 78 per cent during COVID years,” she said Tuesday night during a Barbados Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors online discussion on The Prolonged Impact Of The COVID-19 Pandemic On Barbados.
Williams warned there was also the potential for a rise in vaccine-preventable diseases.
“So things that we would have eliminated years ago, measles, mumps, rubella, tuberculosis et cetera, because of declining rates of uptake of childhood vaccinations, we have the potential to see these rise again in the long term.” (SC)
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