By REGINALD KANYANE
The North West MEC for Health, Madoda Sambatha said, they will continue to encourage parents to sign consent forms in order for their children to be vaccinated against measles. Sambatha, who launched the measles vaccination campaign at Signal Hill Primary School in Mahikeng, North West on 14 February 2023 said, the province has registered 168 measles cases thus far since the outbreak on 10 December 2022.
“Today, we are doing a campaign on measles vaccination. We visited Lonely Park because it is the epic centre of the measles outbreak in the province.
“You will remember that the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) had issued a national call on 2 December 2022 that, there is an outbreak of measles in North West, Mpumalanga, Gauteng, and Limpopo provinces,” he said.
Sambatha further said, on 10 December 2022, they launched the campaign in Lichtenburg and had three cases of measles reported in Lonely Park at the time. He added that, out of 168 confirmed measles cases across the province, 148 are from Ngaka Modiri Molema District and predominately in Mahikeng.
“In terms of the number of vaccination from 10 December 2022 till today, we have managed to vaccinate 686 000 children between 5 months and 15 years respectively. So, in two months, we have vaccinated 600 000 children.
“We want to ensure that, all those who are between 5 months and 15 years are vaccinated. This also shows the capacity of the department to respond. So, the outbreak is still under control as we are not getting more than 10 reported cases per day,” said Sambatha.
However, Sabatha said, one of the serious challenges, is an issue of beliefs by families. He said, there are families that do not believe in any vaccination even though their children are in the same category.
“Unfortunately, some of them are the first children to be detected with measles. So, this means if one does not believe in vaccination, yet move around as a member of the community, they become a danger to those they are moving with,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Deputy Director-General of Institution at North West Department of Education, Dr Shadrack Mvula shared the same sentiments. Mvula said they will continue to work in partnership with their sister department of health in this campaign.
“We are very appreciative of this event. We have been working together with our sister department in creating awareness in terms of this campaign. So, the Department of Education will be working in partnership throughout the districts.
“Well, we have not observed a high volume of skepticism, however, we are aware that, there are quite a number of parents, who may not be willing to let their children vaccinated,” he said.
Mvula said, however, they were surprised to see that because many of the parents were born at the time when vaccination happened at a very early age. He said they encourage parents to change their position.
“Even in this school, we were told about 25 parents who have not signed the consent forms. So, we hope that, these parents will change their position after getting more information and understanding of how the vaccine works. Truly, this is done in the best interest of their children,” said Mvula.
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