The Ministry of Health wants it speed up the vaccination campaign versus complaint in children under 5 years old. For this reason, it has asked Primary Care health centers to, as far as possible, open diaries to make an afternoon appointment with patients in order to increase the number of vaccines administered daily and improve accessibility for citizens.
This was reported by the department headed by Juan José Pedreño, from where they want to reach higher coverage rates of flu vaccination and protection in these last few weeks of the year when cases tend to skyrocket, even taking into account that this is the first year that children have generally been vaccinated without requiring them to belong to groups at risk or have previous pathologies.
For this the SMS has contacted all health areas so that the centers try to organize resources and divert the administration of vaccines even in the afternoon, at a different time from the school day.
Nurses are calling for staff reinforcement
Murcia’s Satse Nursing Union frowns that children could be vaccinated in the afternoon to prevent them from missing class in the morning, but believes more staffing would be needed. Satse’s secretary general, José Antonio Blaya, believes it would be necessary to provide reinforcements or talk to the coordinators of each center to see which nursing professionals carry the least load and can spend the afternoon, “although in this case they should also be paid the complement of the afternoon modules”. However, he criticizes the fact that decisions are taken unilaterally without making any proposals to the union organizations. Satse’s organization secretary, Luis Esparza, also has difficulty finding professionals who work in the afternoon and believes that they are necessary more contracts.
In addition, the Ministry announced yesterday the starting web dating system for the flu vaccination under 5 years old. It has taken Health over a month to enable this web appointment, since the childhood flu vaccination campaign began in early November, but it wasn’t until this Monday, December 12, when the web appointment was operational for vaccination through the murciasalud portal and mobile phone application.
nasal vaccine
The Region of Murcia this year was the first autonomous community to administer the pediatric flu vaccine through the nose in health centers to children between 2 and 5 years old, starting November 2nd. While the children aged 6 to 23 months receive the conventional intramuscular vaccine.
Vaccines that are administered through the mucous membranes usually have a better response than intramuscular vaccines, since they act directly on the entry gate of the pathogen into the body. The pioneering use of this vaccine in the Murcia region will serve to carry out an acceptability study that could be useful in future decision-making.
Salud points out that the influenza virus represents a significant burden of disease in children under 5 years of age. Nationally, influenza in this age group represents an annual average of 58,640 consultations in Primary Care.
