The Health Ministry announc-ed on Saturday that it has received notification of the pending shipment, which is set to arrive this Thursday, some five months after it was due here.
Comprehensive surveillance of the virus continues, the ministry said, noting that referral of suspected cases has been low. “…testing for H1N1 is at a standstill since we have not been able to receive enough referrals for testing,” the ministry said. Additionally, no new cases have been detected for some time and the ministry emphasized this in its statement.
The National Referral Lab is prepared to handle any increase in the number of referrals, the ministry added. Priority groups had been identified for the H1N1 vaccines including children under five and healthcare frontline workers
Guyana has confirmed some 32 cases of H1N1with just around 70 persons being treated for the flu-virus, no deaths were recorded. The threat of the virus has waned within recent months after initially setting off a global pandemic alert.
Meanwhile, the Health Ministry also announced that it has received the first doses of rotavirus vaccine and will start immunizing young children who are vulnerable within the coming weeks.
Rotavirus is ranked as one of the most common cause of diarrhoea in children under five years and studies here has shown that it causes up to one third of all diarrhoea illnesses in children. The rotavirus vaccine will become part of the routing vaccination programme in 2011, the ministry said. It added that the vaccine will reduce significantly morbidity and mortality among Guyanese children.
The ministry said also that it is working on introducing the HPV vaccine later this year. It pointed to studies which it said demonstrate that the main HPV type in Guyana is consistent with the make-up of the vaccines that are available.
According to the ministry, there are two types of vaccines on the market today, marketed by Merck and GSK (Glaxo-Smith Kline). With technical support from PAHO, the ministry considering which one of the vaccines it will introduce here.
“In the meantime, Guyana is rapidly expanding our Prevention and Control of Cervical Cancer programme,” the ministry added. It noted that overseas partners from OMNI Med in the USA are in Guyana to assist in scaling up the Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid (VIA) programme.
