The Mpumalanga Department of Health has raised concerns about parents and caregivers who fail to take their children for scheduled vaccinations. This as World Immunisation Week is being celebrated. The department’s Eugene Mashabane says the province’s measles immunisations are at 81%. He has urged parents to take their children to health facilities.
“Some of the parents are not giving consent so that we are able to vaccinate the children, especially the children that are in schools. We do issue out consent forms but some of the parents or some of the children do not bring in filled-in consent forms. We cannot vaccinate those children without the parents’ consent,” says Mashabane.
Meanwhile, the Mpumalanga Health Department will this week run various vaccination initiatives in the province. Mashabane says they will focus on early childhood development institutions.
“So, our school have nurses, and our outreach vaccination teams are visiting the early childhood development centres so that they can scale up vaccination. We are also providing vaccination in our facilities where we are conducting facility immunizations, catch up campaigns for all the children that have missed their doses,” Mashabane elaborates.
