Parliament Initiates Mandatory Vaccination
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Tuesday, September 18
Georgian Dream ruling party lawmakers have initiated vaccination to become mandatory in Georgia as many parents, due to fright to vaccines, rumors or other personal reasons do not take children for vaccination.
The Georgian parliament has already adopted the vaccination bill in its first reading, which means that after the second and third voting of the bill by lawmakers, a parent or parents may face penalties if they refuse to vaccinate their children.
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Vaccination is a unique opportunity to avoid illnesses which pose serious threats to our children’s life and health. These illnesses are measles, pneumococcal infections and others, which are easily avoidable by the quality and free vaccines in Georgia,” Head of the Parliamentary Health Committee and an author of the bill Akaki Zoidze said.
The necessity of vaccination has become particularly speculated when hundreds of people in the country have got infected by measles.
Measles has killed over 30 people.
Deputy Head of the National Decease Control Centre Paata Imnadze claims that the reason of measles spread is that hundreds of people or their parents refused to be injected as a rumor was spread about harmful vaccines several years ago.
Imnadze said that majority cases of measles this year (306) have been observed in Georgia’s Western, Black Sea region Adjara.
Tbilisi took the second place with 264 cases, while 132 cases were recorded in Imereti region. 116 cases were observed in Samegrelo, 32 in Kvemo Kartli, Guria-22, and Samtskhe-Javakheti – 16. As for Shida Kartli and Mtskheta-Mtianeti, only 7 cases were observed in both regions separately. Kakheti saw 6 cases of measles, Racha-Lechkhumi – 5 and Abkhazia – 2.
He said that measles distribution has significantly increased in comparison with 2017 when only tens of cases were observed.
Imnadze believes that the media has to remind the society more frequently that the immunization is free and everyone can get vaccinated to prevent the disease from spreading.
