Rally in response to the 2015 Vaccination Week

(Baonghean.vn) - On the morning of April 24th, in Bac Giang city, the Ministry of Health and the People's Committee of Bac Giang province organized a rally to respond to the vaccination week.

The event was attended and directed by Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam. Representing the Ministry of Health were Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Thi Kim Tien - Minister of Health, Professor, Dr. Nguyen Thanh Long - Deputy Minister; the Head of the UNICEF Representative Office in Vietnam, and representatives from the People's Committees, Departments of Health, Health Communication and Education Centers, and Preventive Medicine Centers of 27 provinces and cities in the Northern region.

Overview of the rally

At the rally, Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Thi Kim Tien emphasized that the invention of vaccines is a great achievement of humanity, saving millions of lives every year. The Expanded Immunization Program in Vietnam, implemented since 1985, has administered hundreds of millions of vaccine doses to mothers and children annually, helping to prevent many infectious diseases such as diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus.

Thanks to vaccination programs in our country, the incidence and mortality rates among children have decreased by hundreds to thousands of times compared to before the program was implemented, reducing healthcare costs and improving public health. Vietnam eradicated polio in 2000 and neonatal tetanus in 2005. Vietnam is moving towards eliminating measles through a supplementary measles-rubella vaccination campaign that has vaccinated over 20,000 children, achieving a 95% coverage rate nationwide. The upcoming inclusion of the measles-rubella vaccine in the routine immunization program will increase the number of vaccines administered to 12.

The success of vaccination programs has contributed significantly to protecting and improving the health of Vietnamese children and achieving the Millennium Development Goals. However, recently, infectious diseases have become more complex, and if vaccination is not maintained and children are not fully vaccinated, the risk of disease outbreaks is very high.

Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam delivered a speech at the rally.

Speaking at the rally, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam highly appreciated the results of the vaccination program implemented by the health sector in the past period. Thanks to vaccination, hundreds of millions of people have been protected and prevented from dying. Given its importance, vaccination activities need to be maintained regularly and further promoted. The Deputy Prime Minister also called on the entire society and all levels of government to understand the importance of vaccination, pay more attention to it, and cooperate with the health sector from the stages of campaigning and raising awareness to organizing and implementing vaccination activities. At the same time, the health sector needs to maintain the achievements already made and strive even harder to ensure that vaccination work yields sustainable results, so that everyone receives the correct, complete, safe, and convenient vaccinations.

The 2015 Vaccination Week, themed "Joining Hands for Vaccination to Protect the Community," was implemented nationwide from April 24th to 30th, 2015, to raise awareness about the benefits and importance of vaccination, maintain the achievements of the expanded immunization program, and encourage the participation of the community and all levels of government in disease prevention through vaccination.

From Thanh