Mayor of Drogheda, Cllr Michelle Hall has welcomed the HSE’s ‘Every Dose Counts’ campaign marking the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) European Immunisation Week 2023, and is asking parents to make sure that their children are up-to-date with all their baby and school vaccinations.
The theme for this year is “the big catch-up” and aims to improve vaccination uptake worldwide, especially in younger children who may have missed out on their routine vaccines since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mayor Hall, who is also Vice Chair of the Dublin/North East Regional Health Forum says “Unvaccinated children and young people are most at risk of disease. This health service is being offered free to children in Ireland and it helps prevents childhood illness and possibly death. It’s important that we get back to pre-pandemic levels of immunisation.”
Dr Lucy Jessop, the HSE’s Immunisation Lead and Consultant in Public Health Medicine at the National Immunisation Office, said: “In Ireland children get two doses of the MMR vaccine so they can be fully protected against measles. However, uptake rates of the first and second doses of the MMR vaccine have dropped below the 95% rate recommended by the WHO to stop measles from spreading.
“Unvaccinated, young children are most at risk of infectious diseases like measles. But if your child has missed any of their recommended vaccines, it’s not too late to catch up and get protected.”
Young people who are eligible for the Laura Brennan HPV vaccine catch-up programme can get a free HPV vaccine if they missed out on the vaccine when it was offered to them in school. “The more young people vaccinated and women screened the better the spread of HPV infection can be controlled and the more HPV related cancers prevented,” says Dr Jessop.
For more information about the vaccines recommended for you and your family, talk to your local healthcare provider or visit https://www.hse.ie/eng/
