The participants at the workshop held yesterday for healthcare professionals on details of the Tdap vaccination drive at Ezdan Palace Hotel.
Doha: The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) expects approximately 8,000 students to get vaccinated next month against tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis (Tdap).
The annual vaccination campaign kicked off in January and will continue until March. It will include students from both private and public schools.
The three common bacterial infections (Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus) has been eliminated in Qatar since seven years due to the effective national vaccination programme implemented in the country, said Sheikh Dr Mohamed Al Thani, Director of Public Health MoPH.
“We didn’t report any endemic of the diseases in Qatar recently. We started the vaccination campaign in 2011 and since then we have zero number of cases recorded in Qatar. This means the vaccine has helped to lower the risk of the diseases,” he told The Peninsula, speaking on the sidelines of a workshop held yesterday for healthcare professionals, including nurses from schools and Primary Health Centres, on details of the vaccination drive.
However, two cases of Diphtheria were reported in 2017 and two Pertussis cases in 2016, among those who were not vaccinated against the diseases and come from abroad.
The campaign is being done in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, and with the Primary Healthcare Corporation.
Dr Soha Al Bayat, Head of Vaccination Unit, Health Protection and Communicable Disease Control Department at the MoPH, said that vaccination is the best proven measure to protect children and adults from infectious and communicable diseases. “We are having this annual campaign because every vaccine has its time-bound efficacy. When a child reaches adolescent age the immune level induced by the vaccine given at childhood becomes weak,” she said.
During the vaccination campaign, doctors and nurses from the MoPH and PHCC will visit schools to vaccinate students. However, children will be vaccinated only if parents give their consent. “If parents reject we won’t vaccinate the child. The more parents will cooperate, the more we will be able to protect children, ” she said.
As per international data, about 40 percent of cases of pertussis are among adolescents between the age of 11 and 18 years. The Tdap vaccine is a recommendation by the World Health Organisation to preventing the disease. The Tdap vaccine covering tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis provides at least ten years protection from the diseases.
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.
