HAVANA, Cuba.- The Cuban National Immunization Program has saved more than 22,500 children since its implementation in 1962 until 2009, said Dr. Miguel Angel Galindo, an advisor of the national vaccination program who won the 1999 Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Award for Immunization.
Speaking to reporters in Havana, Galindo praised Cuba’s efforts to guarantee free and high-quality health services for the people in spite of limitations resulting from the US’s almost 50-year-old economic blockade of the island.
He noted that, since 1962, the national anti-polio vaccination program has led to the eradication of poliomyelitis when Cuba became the first country of the Americas free form this scourge.
The expert added that other diseases that have been eradicated include diphtheria, measles, whooping cough and German measles as well as severe clinical forms of neonatal tetanus, tubercular meningitis and serious complications from congenital German measles and post-parotitis meningoencephalitis.
Galindo added pointed out that mortality has been reduced in more than 95% in cases such as meningitis, hepatitis B and typhoid, among others.
He said that during a recently concluded national anti-polio vaccination campaign, more than half a million children were immunized and added that all the Cuban people under 63 years is vaccinated against poliomyelitis.
He also praised a current vaccination campaign against the A H1N1 flu virus as part of which more than one million people in the island have received doses against this disease.
