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Do I need to take an adult to avoid an epidemic?
Medical expert of the article
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
When it comes to confronting the epidemic, everyone is telling about the need for child vaccination. But how to be an adult? Do they need to be vaccinated, when and from what?
Indeed, immunotherapists are worried in earnest: in Ukraine, almost none of adults makes mandatory vaccinations, in particular, against diphtheria. Why? The main factor is the lack of necessary information. Few people know that for adults there are a number of mandatory vaccinations.
The specialists told us what vaccines should be remembered after 20 years, and what can happen if this is not done.
The Ministry of Health of Ukraine provides mandatory revaccination against diseases such as diphtheria and tetanus. The fact is that the immune defense, which is formed after vaccinations against these diseases, exists only for 8-10 years. Therefore, it is recommended to be vaccinated at 26 years, and then every 10 years.
In some countries, adults are re-vaccinated against whooping cough: in Ukraine, the mandatory nature of this vaccination depends on the epidemiological situation. At the moment there is no acute need for such a vaccine.
The Ministry of Health also identified a list of professions whose representatives are obliged to do the vaccination without fail. These are people who, due to their professional activities, can directly contact dangerous pathogens. Among such professions are medical workers, veterinarians, farm workers and meat processing enterprises, employees of children's institutions, etc.
According to statistics, 30 patients with pertussis and tetanus died in Ukraine over the past three years. Last year, the World Health Organization noted that the vaccination range in Ukraine is the smallest among other European countries. Therefore, doctors are worried, as there are all prerequisites for the development of the epidemic.
It is considered that an infectious epidemic does not occur if more than 90% of people have immunity from the disease. In our country, this figure is less than 40%.
As the leading immunotherapist V. Kotsarenko points out, most Ukrainians are not vaccinated because of internal migration. Moving from one settlement to another, people remain fixed to the polyclinic according to the residence permit. An additional factor is poor sanitary education. The person can recall the need for vaccination only with employment (and even then not always), or when he is injured by a rusty nail.
"Episodic flares of the same diphtheria in the adult environment are available. Moreover, the disease is much more severe than in childhood. Relative to the tetanus, the statistics are also disappointing. When infected with a tetanus stick, the risk of getting sick from a patient without vaccination is much higher. Conducting repeated vaccinations is vitally important, since we are talking about really dangerous infectious pathologies - the likelihood of a lethal outcome is very high, "Kozartsenko summed up.
As for children, only 46% of small patients have been vaccinated over the past year - and this is not even every second child.
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