In the First Committee of the Senate, the Minister of Health, Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo, during the debate on political control of his portfolio due to the shortage of medicines, made a statement that surprised thousands, including several leaders in the sector: he assured that the Colombians who were vaccinated against covid-19 were part of “an international experiment.”
“We are playing with the lives of Colombians. We cannot be a factor of experimentation. “All of us who are vaccinated today, with the exception of those who took Sinovac, I have Sinovac, all the new technology and all the vaccines entered here without permission,” said the minister.
Debate First Commission of the Senate debate on political control over the shortage of medicines Minister of Health Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo | Photo: Guillermo Torres Reina
According to Jaramillo, “we went and became an experiment, all the Colombians who are vaccinated served for the largest experiment that has ever been done in the history of humanity. We cannot continue experimenting with the Colombian community, and even less with the indigenous people, with the blacks, and the poorest in the country, with the peasants.”
The minister’s statements did not go down very well in different sectors of the health area in Colombia. One of the entities that publicly expressed its discontent was the Epidemiology Association of Colombia, Asocepic, which expressed its “total disagreement with the statements made today by the Minister of Health regarding the vaccines used in the National Plan of Vaccination against covid-19″.
“Vaccines are the most cost-effective measure in public health to save lives, to prevent the spread of other diseases and to mitigate their consequences on quality of life. Without vaccines, more people would have died and the world would still be quarantined and wearing masks,” the association said.
According to Asocepic, “these statements are contrary to scientific evidence, misinform and undermine public confidence in vaccination, which has been shown to be highly effective in preventing the disease and in many other infectious diseases. death”.
“Vaccines are the most cost-effective measure in public health to save lives, to prevent the spread of other diseases and to mitigate their consequences on quality of life. Without vaccines, more people would have died and the world would still be quarantined and wearing masks,” the association said. | Photo: Week
“In the case of covid-19, Asocepic continues, vaccines have proven to be highly effective in the most vulnerable groups such as older adults and people with chronic morbidity.”
And he adds that “these population groups were prioritized in the National Vaccination Plan against covid-19. We consider that statements like this from the Minister of Health go against the responsibility and knowledge that his position entails.”
Slow vaccination in Colombia in 2023
These vaccines were part of a batch of more than 700,000 that arrived in the country just a few months ago.
“The management inability of this Government is alarming. It took more than a year to bring 757,400 bivalent vaccines against covid-19, within the framework of a contract signed by the previous Government. The serious thing is that they expire in December and their application has not yet begun,” congressman Andrés Forero noted at the time on his X account.
“In the case of covid-19, says Asocepic, vaccines have proven to be highly effective in the most vulnerable groups such as older adults and people with chronic morbidity.”
A week later, the national government began applying them, in record time, when they had been stored for months.
However, the vaccine against covid-19 that is currently administered in Colombia is not the most up-to-date to treat the disease that has evolved into new variants, different from the original one, which spread from China to the entire world in 2020. In total 37,137,659 million Colombians have the complete schedule of this vaccine.
In the region, countries like Chile are providing their population with this updated version of the vaccine.
2023-11-29 23:08:37
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