Flu vaccination campaign begins in Cuenca

Health centers and local clinics in the Cuenca health district have begun the 2024-2025 influenza vaccination campaign as usual, which will last until March 31, 2025.

Provincial Health Delegate José María Pastor, together with the Director of Continuity and Quality of Health Care of the Integrated Territorial Management Begoña Fernández and the Head of Public Health Bruno Magro presented the content of this campaign at the clinic. in the city of Villar de Olalla, calling on the most vulnerable sectors of the population to get vaccinated, since, as they noted, thanks to vaccination there are very few cases of influenza.

“I urge the population, because it is worth relying on prevention, it is worth getting vaccinated, I urge the entire population who is in these age groups and who may experience complications, to make efforts to get vaccinated,” said the head of the Ministry of Health, who was accompanied by specialists from the clinic and the city’s mayor, Daniel Aillon, as well as numerous neighbors who came to get vaccinated.

The provincial health official explained that the goal of this flu campaign is to achieve 75 percent coverage among people aged 60 years and older and 60 percent among pregnant women and people with high-risk medical conditions.

He also said that this year a new risk group has appeared, which includes employees of kindergartens and preschool education centers.

In general, vaccination is recommended for all people who are at risk of developing health complications after infection, those who may transmit the disease to high-risk groups, and those who provide essential services to the community.

Likewise, special attention will be paid to immunizing pregnant women in any trimester of pregnancy and children aged 6 to 59 months (up to 5 years) to protect them and their most vulnerable environment.

Regarding COVID-19 vaccination, health authorities reminded that although it is no longer a public health emergency, the SARS-COV19 virus continues to circulate and is prone to mutation, so it is recommended to start flu vaccination at the same time. with people in institutionalized institutions, employees of social and medical centers or residential buildings, as well as people over 80 years of age, gradually decreasing in age groups.

For her part, the Director General of Care and Quality Management, Begoña Fernandez, sent a message of responsibility to citizens because, according to her, vaccines are the best tool we have to prevent serious illnesses caused by covid and influenza.

It is true that in our province the citizens are very generous and that is why we are the leaders of vaccination in the region and Castilla-La Mancha is also the leader of vaccination at the national level,” Fernandez explained, thanking all the professionals for their help. are working to develop the campaign and have indicated that this year they will push for aggressive recruitment of primary care staff to ensure no one is left unvaccinated.

The Government of Castile-La Mancha, through the Ministry of Health, considers it necessary to develop a policy for the prevention of the disease among the population and has therefore, in recent years, increased the budget for vaccines included in the vaccination schedule, starting in 2015 with 5.8 million euros allocated for this campaign against 39 million euros planned for this campaign, of which 5 million will be allocated to the influenza campaign.

This year there are more than 500,000 doses of vaccines available for the flu campaign in Castile-La Mancha, and it is estimated that more than 40,000 vaccines will arrive in the Cuenca health district.

Last year, a total of 39,212 vaccines were administered in the health sector, of which 28,016 were vaccines for people over 60 years of age, 7,970 for risk groups aged 14 to 59 years; and 3,226 children under 14 years of age.

Finally, let us recall that on October 1, vaccination of newborns against respiratory syncytial virus began, thanks to which last year hospitalization for this pathology decreased by 80 percent.

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