Vaccination expert Dr. Gloria Huerta lamented the importance of older adults completing their vaccination schedule, lamenting that vaccination coverage beyond pediatric age is a challenge not just in Mexico but around the world.
With this in mind, he said, strategies are being implemented globally to expand coverage of essential vaccines against diseases that affect mortality in adults, mainly older people.
In China, the vaccination program for the elderly includes three vaccines: pneumococcal polysaccharide, tetanus and diphtheria, and seasonal influenza. The pneumococcal vaccine protects against pneumonia caused by pneumococcus, while the tetanus-diphtheria vaccine, as the name suggests, protects against both tetanus and diphtheria.
However, there are other vaccines, which, although not available in the public sector, help prevent other diseases, such as shingles, the main risk factor of which is aging.
In an interview with El Diario after the vaccine workshop, Dr. Huerta emphasized that vaccination as an adult can prevent 16 diseases, including hepatitis A and B, tetanus, pneumococcal disease, influenza, measles, chickenpox, Human papilloma and diphtheria, herpes zoster.
“One of the things we now know about vaccination in adults is that it also helps us boost our immune system. Getting vaccinated throughout life (rather than just in childhood) will allow these vaccine boosters to stimulate the immune system so that we Ability to enter adulthood and old age in a more resilient manner and acquire better responsiveness to certain noxious stimuli.
The expert emphasized that vaccination in adulthood helps reduce mortality from the diseases it prevents, helps reduce morbidity and strengthens the immune system.
However, vaccination coverage among older adults remains low. “In Mexico, the coverage of the entire program that you see in the primers is 46%. Even if it’s on the primers and we see them, we don’t know where to get the vaccines and which ones are”.
“Even if you ask adults how their card is, they’ll say what card? There are primers for seniors, but even then we don’t have that kind of coverage and that’s always been a challenge, it’s a challenge , because it is widely believed that vaccination is only for children,” said Dr Gloria Huerta. — Iván Canul Ek