MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Vaccination of the Americas campaign launched in Paraguay

President Fernando Lugo (C)and Bolivia’s Health Minister Ramiro Tapia (L) during the launched of Vaccination of the Americas campaign

Paraguay’s president Fernando Lugo and the Pan-American Health Organization, PHO, launched Sunday a new edition of the “Vaccination in the Americas” week which has the purpose of vaccinating 30 million people against a wide range of diseases that still ravage the region.

“Diseases have no frontiers”, said Paraguayan president Lugo “we need to work together Paraguayans, Argentines and Bolivians”. The ceremony took place to the north of the country in the impoverished area of Chaco, close to Bolivia. Paraguay, Bolivia and the north of Argentina have been lately exposed to an epidemics of the mosquito transmitted dengue and some cases of yellow fever.

However the current campaign on its sixth edition is geared to immunize against such diseases as measles, polio, diphtheria, German measles, tetanus, among others to which vulnerable populations of the Americas are still seriously exposed.

Similar ceremonies have been planned Monday in Tartagal, Salta, Argentina and Yacuiba, Bolivia, areas which have been highly exposed to common dengue and the more serious haemorrhagic strain.

“Work has begun and we hope that in a near future all these evils, with the intelligence of man, can be definitively eradicated from the area”, said Esperanza Martinez, Paraguay’s Health minister.

“This year we are emphasizing to everybody that vaccination is an affair for the whole family”, pointed out Mirtha Rosas from PHO who said efforts are concentrated in reaching those areas geographically distant and isolated.

Representatives from the Health ministries from Bolivia and Argentina were also present at the ceremony.