There was no vaccination on the first day in the second term because according to the data only 5% of school children have not been vaccinated with the MMR vaccine, which is not a large percentage, the Ministry of Health told “Meta”.
“The Committee on Infectious Diseases at the last meeting decided not to prolong the winter school vacation, because the number of the pupils vaccinated with MMR is high, i.e. only 5% of the total hadn’t received the vaccine. However, the parents of these children will be called by the schools to take them for vaccination. In principle, there is no resistance to vaccination here. The problem is that there is unwarranted fear that the MMR vaccine causes autism and other diseases, however in practice, when the child start to speak and walk, the parents take it to vaccinations,” said Marija Tasev, a spokesperson for the ministry.
She added that from the beginning of the epidemic, until 15 o’clock today, a total of 4,070 people have been vaccinated so far. Currently, the total number of patients with measles is 75, and the Public Health Institute is expected to release fresh figures tomorrow.
The president of the Immunization Committee, prof. Alexandra Grozdanova, repeated the call to parents to vaccinate their children.
“At the beginning of the epidemic, there were 15,000 un-vaccinated children in Skopje. Since then, this figure has been reduced by almost a third, which reflects our expectations. However, we appeal again to parents to vaccinate their children,” says Grozdanova for “Meta”.
