Nurses and other healthcare professionals during the training workshop on Tdap vaccination campaign. Pic: Abdul Basit/The Peninsula
The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) has launched its annual national vaccination campaign against Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis) which aims to cover about 20,000 school students.
The vaccination campaign for 2020 will continue until February and encourage school children to get the booster vaccine. It will cover year 10 students from 72 private and 62 public schools. It is being held in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education and Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC).
“Booster vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis is a combination-immunising agent given by injection to prevent against those infectious diseases."
“The vaccine will boost and increase the protection that the child or adult had from an earlier dose for more than 10 years,” said Sheikh Dr. Mohammed bin Hamad Al Thani, Director of the Public Health Department at MoPH, yesterday.
“We urged families to encourage their children to get the vaccination. It is not compulsory but it is highly recommended,” he said while speaking on the sidelines of a training workshop held to coincide with the launch of Tdap vaccination campaign.
Around 250 nurses and healthcare workers attached to public and private schools and schools affiliated to Qatar Petroleum were present at the workshop.
The workshop included several informative presentations on the latest practical and scientific vaccination information. There will also be presentations on the objectives of the campaign and its steps.
“We are working with the PHCC and the Ministry of Education and Higher Education and aim to vaccinate more students in a safer setting. Tdap vaccination campaigns have been successful in the past. We have seen an increase in number of students getting vaccinated. When we started the campaign in 2011, about 50% of the year 10 students were vaccinated, it then increased to 60%,” said Dr. Hamad Eid Al Rumeihi, Director of Health Protection and Communicable Disease Control Department at MoPH.
“The Tdap vaccination we provide is one of the best and effective. Tetanus has been eliminated in Qatar few years ago. A few diphtheria and pertussis cases have been reported in the past years but the cases were imported and the patients had not been vaccinated against the diseases,” he added.
During the vaccination campaign, doctors and nurses from the MoPH and PHCC will visit schools to vaccinate students. The dose that will be administered to the students is considered one of the routine adolescence vaccinations and is part of the routine vaccination schedule in the country.
