Vaccination Efforts Around the Region

Health workers and volunteers in countries throughout the Americas joined forces to make sure vaccines reached their targets, from urban neighborhoods to the remotest rural zones.

Brazil used Vaccination Week in the Americas to mount a major campaign to immunize children in indigenous communities. A PAHO team traveled with Brazilian health workers to take vaccines to indigenous villages in Xingu Park, in the state of Mato Grosso. Health workers and volunteers organized by the Ministry of Health and the national agency for indigenous affairs managed to deliver vaccines to some 17,000 indigenous people. Brazil also targeted 12 million elderly people with vaccines against influenza.

In Cali, Colombia, some 5,000 children were vaccinated on a single day against tuberculosis and polio. Countrywide, more than 187,000 children under 1 were vaccinated against polio and more than 100,000 1-year-olds against yellow fever.

Cuba vaccinated 542,000 children against polio.The country currently boasts the highest number of vaccines included in its national immunization program.

In Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic, dozens of teenagers worked as vaccination volunteers as part of a community service requirement for graduation from high school. The youths helped health workers vaccinate children from 1 to 5 against polio, pertussis, diphtheria, measles, meningitis, and hepatitis B. In all, more than 55,000 people participated in the effort, working in 900 health posts throughout the country.

In a show of bilateral solidarity, the ministers of health of Nicaragua and Honduras carried out a Binational Immunization Day as part of Vaccination Week in the Americas. The launch took place in San Marcos Colón in the department of Choluteca, Honduras, and in the city of Someto, in the department of Madriz, Nicaragua. A similar event took place on the border between Honduras and Guatemala.

Paraguay placed special emphasis on vaccination against rubella. By the end of the week, the country had vaccinated 1.2 million people, or 32 percent of the population. The highest rate of coverage achieved was in the capital, Asunción, with 52 percent vaccinated and in Alto Paraná, with 50 percent.

In Peru, 24,000 workers from the Ministry of Health participated in Vaccination Week, delivering vaccines against polio, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, influenza B, and measles.

In Venezuela's Guayana region, health workers set up 246 vaccine posts to ensure that children could complete their immunization schedules. Communication campaigns focused on motivating parents to take their children for vaccination,
and more than 15,000 individuals in all
received vaccines. Health officials
from both Venezuela and
Colombia worked together
to improve monitoring
of rates of
vaccination.