Under the theme ‘Vaccination: A gift for life’, Seychelles joined the rest of the African region to celebrate African Vac-cination Week from the 24th to 30th April 2015. This year’s commemoration in the Seychelles focused more on raising awareness and reinforcing immunisation health messages to various target groups, with the objective of further strengthening immunization programmes and coverage in the country. On this day, the Minister of Health Honorable Mitcy Larue released her AVW message on national media, where she stressed on the importance for each and every child in the Seychelles to be vaccinated.

In her message, she talked of how well Seychelles is doing in maintaining very high immunization coverage against the 11 killer diseases, whilst remaining committed to introducing more vaccine into the routine immunization schedule. None the less, the Minister said that one challenge faced by the country is with regards to convincing a small number of parents who are still choosing not to have their children vaccinated because of their religious beliefs. Minister Larue took the AVW opportunity to make a special appeal to those few parents and asked them to rethink their decision, to appreciate the health benefits of immunisation and to get their child vaccinated the soonest.

Such message was also reinforced on national media with radio interviews conducted by the EPI programme of the Ministry of Health on the 24th of April on Pure FM radio and on the 30th April, on the SBC radio. The live radio inter-views provided a forum for further sensitisation on the African Vaccination Week and on the benefits of vaccination. Health talks and exhibitions for various target groups were also organised at community level throughout the week on the three main islands, Mahe, Praslin and Lad Digue.

EPI staff of six district health centres took the opportunity provided by the 5th African Vaccination week to focus on tracing and administering of ATT vaccine to secondary schools students who had not yet taken their ATT vaccine at 15 years. Administration of ATT vaccine also took place at various work places , including the Special Support Unit of the Seychelles Police. At the Beau Vallon Health Centre, situated north of the main island of Mahe, a special sensitisation session on the African Vaccination Week and on the importance of immunisation was delivered by the Nurse Coordinator for all the health workers in the health centres.

The last activities organised for the Afri-can vaccination week in the Seychelles will be a sensitisation session for medical practitioners on the introduction of the Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV) and on the ‘Switch’ in early June 2015.

Message from the Minister for Health aired in the media

Immunization is widely recognized as one of the most successful and cost-effective health intervention. Millions of lives are saved every year. This year, the African Vaccination Week aims at “Closing the Gap”, improve service delivery and reaching equity in immunization levels. I am pleased to say that Seychelles has done well in ensuring that all our children are vaccinated against the 11 killer diseases such as measles, mumps, diphtheria etc.. and we are moving towards the introduction of new vaccines into our national immunization programme. In 2014, we introduced the Human Papilloma Virus Vaccine among 12 years old girls which will protect them from cervical cancer into their adulthood and this year we will be introducing the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) to partially replace the traditional oral polio. We also look forward to introducing the rotavirus vaccine to further enhance the package and ensure protection of our children against diarrhea cause by the rotavirus.

Despite all our efforts and achievements, we are faced with the challenge of being able to convince a few parents who choose not to have their babies immunized to change their minds. In the best interest of the child, I am personally appealing to those parents to please think again and get your child vaccinated. Getting your child vaccinated is the most precious gift that you can give to them. We owe it to our children. It is their right and we as health workers need to advocate for them.

I wish to thank all the health staff who are working hard to maintain the standard and all partners who are supporting the vaccination programme in Seychelles.

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For more information, please contact:

Mrs Doreen Hotive, NPO/HIP Officer
Tel: (248) 4224795
Email: hotived [at] who.int (hotived[at]who[dot]int)
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Below:

01. Part of the exhibition set up at the Anse Royale Hospital 

02. Part of the exhibition set up at the Anse Royale Hospital