There is a misconception that vaccines may cause disease – Abdulrazak

Biography

Abdulrazaq Habib, is a Professor of Infectious Diseases at Bayero University, Kano and President, Nigerian Infectious Diseases Society. He is an epidemiologist, educator, certified in Infectious Diseases Academy of Medicine / Singapore, 2002, Certified in Travel Health International Society of Travel Medicine, 2003. Fellow: Royal Society Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, West African College Physicians; member: International Society Infectious Diseases, Royal College Physicians United Kingdom

Why is vaccination not being paid as much attention as it should be in Nigeria?

It’s difficult to give a one-word answer but my suspicion has to do with the fact that you don’t get to see the disease. When you are vaccinating, you are vaccinating healthy people so in that sense it is not perceived as high priority. People may believe that it’s not worth the investment at that time.

But truly vaccination is probably the most cost effective health intervention that any country should invest in. Even if you don’t see the immediate rewards in the short term, you see them in the long term

So it’s a great shame that as a country we do not pay enough attention to vaccination.

And at times, like we have now with the meningitis epidemic in most of North and Central Nigeria, there have been clear warning signs since late 2013/2014 and we did not prepare or get all the vaccines needed to contain the infection.

Only now when the epidemic is raging and there have been over 500 deaths and over 8,000 patients affected that we are running helter-skelter to get the vaccine.

And it’s the same reason for the lack of priority. Government will prefer to address the already sick people than safeguard the healthy, and this shouldn’t be the case.

What are the common misconceptions about vaccination? Why do people shy away from being vaccinated?

Firstly I think there is a misconception that vaccines themselves may cause disease. Secondly there is a misconception that vaccines may be ulterior motives by the international community to somehow introduce or do more harm, all of these of course are misconceptions, and sadly when you have a disease that is about to be eliminated or eradicated, the side effects of the vaccine become more apparent. Let’s look at polio for instance, when we had hundreds to thousands of cases of polio and people could see with their eyes affected people who became lame from the infection, and so on, society was willing to tolerate the few side effects related to the vaccine; but when we have only a few cases of the disease, society is overly bogged down by the possibility of side effects because now there is an increased drive to get the vaccines out there and thus highly reduced cases of infection that people can reference.

How can Nigeria improve on immunisation awareness without necessarily having to wait until specific awareness dates or weeks like World Immunisation Week?

Continued enlightenment, sensitization, political will, active or pro-active engagement of leadership and traditional community leaders. All of these will be effective. If communities realize that even their traditional leadership is involved, and they are informed of vaccinations and immunizations, then it becomes much more acceptable.

Also I think we may have to consider such rules and regulations that obtain in other parts of the world, like when it comes to enrolling a child into a school, potentially you may want to see his vaccination card before such child is enrolled.

Some may say it’s sort of harsh, but truly if we are exposing the general population with infections we might as well start considering this measure to enlighten, and enforce vaccination and immunization.

Also as a country, we haven’t made much enlightenment to show that vaccine is as smart a tool for infectious diseases as it is for non-infectious diseases. If you look at cancers, Hepatitis B vaccine can reduce liver cancer; Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine can reduce cervical cancer in women.

I think there is a need to publicize the importance of vaccination in containing some of these non-infectious or cancerous conditions.

Kemi Ajumobi