Vietnam targets vaccination rate of 95 percent for under-1-year-old children

Illustrative image (Source: VNA)

Hanoi (VNA) – The aims to have over 95 percent of under-one-year-old children nationwide fully vaccinated in the expanded
national immunization programme by 2020, heard a conference in Hanoi on January
7.

Speaking at the event, Director of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology
(NIHE) Dang Duc Anh said the programme will continue to support disadvantaged localities
to increase their vaccination rate through improving the capacity of medical
staff, and making it easier for the people to access the expanded immunisation
service.

In 2019, the NIHE will promote communication campaigns to raise public
awareness of the benefits of full vaccination, and additional vaccination shots
so that people can actively take their children to fully vaccinate on schedule.

It will also focus on popularise knowledge about monitoring and taking care of
children after vaccination in the community, Anh said.

The conference heard that 2018 was
the 18th year that Vietnam had successfully protected its goal to eliminate polio,
and the 13th year the country had maintained the achievement of removing neonatal
tetanus nationwide.

Measles outbreaks were controlled, while the number of rubella was low in the
year.

The institute has successfully implemented a new vaccine called inactivated polio
vaccine (IPV) into the programme under the support of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI). Since September 2018, the IPV has been used at all health stations of
communes and wards. Around 297,390 children across the country have been given
this vaccine.

It has also successfully used measles-rubella vaccine produced by Vietnam,
instead imported ones for 18-month-old children from April 2018, and provided
the 5-in-1 ComBe Five vaccine for across the
country from December 2018.

The vaccination of hepatitis B for newborns within 24 hours in many localities has
been promoted with more active participation of hospitals. The model has been
also expanded to some mountainous and remote areas, contributing to maintaining the
rate of hepatitis B vaccination for newborn babies at over 70 percent in the
first 11 months of 2018.

Attention was also paid to activities of vaccination against measles-rubella and diphtheria, pertussis,
and tetanus for 18-month-old children, and tetanus vaccination for pregnant women.

The national immunisation information management system has been deployed
nationwide since June 2017.  So far, 11,183
(or 99 percent) of medical stations across the country applied the system to
manage individual immunisation status. In 2018, more than 1.7 million children
were registered on the system to store personal vaccination information,
facilitating the management of at the local
level.-VNA