Barbados Medical Association Warns of Risks as Vaccine Hesitation Persists Among Parents

Vaccine hesitation appears to have remained a by-product of the coronavirus pandemic, touching on vaccines that have been part of this country’s health system for the last 60 years, with the head of the doctor’s association fearing a “great tragedy” if the youngest citizens fall victim to deadly diseases because parents are unwilling to have them immunised.

President of the Barbados Association of Medical Practitioners (BAMP) Dr Lynda Williams voiced concerns on Wednesday about a considerable number of parents being unwilling to have their children immunised against diseases and blamed social media misinformation.

She was troubled by public comments about the government’s call for children to get immunised, she told journalists as the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Barbados launched a new media campaign on octagonal food labelling.

“It was very disheartening to see some people’s responses to the Chief Medical Officer’s call for routine immunisations to be given. All of us were protected by these immunisations from measles, mumps, and rubella, chickenpox, all of the other things we normally immunise for. Now, I find it disheartening that as a result of misinformation, as a result of social media that parents are now looking at the same immunisation schedule that protected them and saying that I will deny my child the right to be so protected,” Dr Williams said.

If the worrying trend continues, she added, Barbadians could be put at serious risk despite the massive leaps in healthcare made over several decades.

“What that means though is for the entire nation, we are at risk. We put ourselves at risk again of these infectious diseases that once eliminated children before their fifth birthday. It is a historical fact. It is easy to go back and look at the historical records and see that many children in Barbados died from vaccine-preventable illnesses until we had wholesale campaigns for vaccination,” the BAMP president said.

“I just want to encourage parents to not be carried away by social media, not be carried away by what you hear from people in other countries. These vaccines are safe, they have been around for a long time, and they have prevented this country from facing an overwhelming infectious disease burden, at a time when we are also fighting the NCD burden,” she said.

Dr Williams suggested that health officials may need to relook their immunisation campaigns to better help tackle misinformation in the public space.