National Vaccination Days 1991

Under the motto "Vaccination is a right of children and a responsibility of adults. So that the life lives" (Para que viva la vida) the campaign was aimed at generating motivation for the vaccination of all children.

In order to guarantee that all the population had access to vaccines, nearly 18,000 vaccination posts were established throughout the country. In addition, diverse organisations and the mass media worked on the diffusion of information and development of the Days.

With the purpose of obtaining the collaboration and participation of multiple sectors that facilitated the success of the Days, a National Coordinating Committee, presided by the First Lady of the Nation, Ana Milena Muñoz de Gaviria and integrated with the Ministers of Health, Government, Defense, Communications and Work, the directors of the Social Security Institute, the Colombian Family Welfare Institute, the National Police, the National Health Institute, the National Radio and Television Institute (Inravision), the Civil Defense, Scouts of Colombia, the Colombian Red Cross, the Supervision of Family Subsidies, Asocajas, the Colombian Society of Paediatrics, the Society of Gynecology - Obstetrics, and the Office of Social Pastoral of the Colombian Episcopado.

Throughout the departments, police stations and municipalities similar committees were constituted. The communities actively participated in the organisation and execution of the Days through the Committees of Community Participation.

With the objective of obtaining suitable promotion of the Days, a letter was sent to journalists so that they collaborated to give the widest possible media diffusion, emphasising as the central objectives of the Days the definitive eradication of Polio and the neonatal Tetanus in the country. In addition to this letter, a folder was enclosed that included a document on the National Vaccination Days in 1991, a synthesis of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) and the main achievements of the country in the matter of vaccination.

In addition, information on the characteristics of neonatal Tetanus and Polio, including definitions, symptoms, and prevention were included. In the different messages produced, the objective was to present to the community basic information on vaccines, including:

• Vaccines are substances that when entering the body by the mouth or injected, create defences that can prevent serious and sometimes fatal diseases.
• Vaccination is a right of each child.
• Vaccination is free.
• All children must be vaccinated, even if they are suffering from diseases like gripe, fever or diarrhoea.
• Children must receive all vaccines before being a year old.
• The parents or people in charge of smaller children under five years old must make sure that their children have received a new dose of Polio vaccine, no matter how many doses they already have had.
• Children, although they are undernourished, weak, or of low weight must be vaccinated.
• Tuberculosis, Poliomyelitis, Pertussis, Diphtheria, Tetanus and Measles are serious diseases.
• If parents do not concern themselves with the vaccination of their children, they are putting them at unnecessary risk of suffering and death.
• Pregnant women need the vaccine against Tetanus to protect themselves and their future children.
• Women in fertile age (15 to 44 years), in whose municipality there have been cases of neonatal Tetanus, must be vaccinated against this disease, although they are not currently pregnant.
• The vaccine can be applied to the mother in any month of pregnancy, without risk for the child.
• In Colombia, health agencies vaccinate children every day, so it is not necessary that families wait until the vaccination Days to immunise children.

Immunisation and Vaccines, Children, Health.

The National Vaccination Days of 1991 were framed in the commitment assumed by Colombia in the World Summit for Children, made in New York in September of 1990, in which the participating countries committed to reducing the mortality of children under-5 years by means of the adopting measures like universal vaccination. Specific goals included the world-wide eradication of Polio by year 2000, the elimination of the Neonatal Tetanus by 1995, the reduction of 90% of cases of Measles and the maintenance of the coverage of vaccination against all the immune-preventable diseases at greater than 90% coverage levels for children under one year old, and similar coverage for vaccination against neonatal Tetanus for the women of age to procreate.