The health service is implementing a scheme that includes vaccination against MPCS in hospital preventive medicine services.

The Ministry of Health has already implemented a new vaccination scheme to prevent infection with the MPOX virus, also including hospital preventive medicine services as vaccine administration points to facilitate access to people at risk.

In each of the three provincial capitals, the Ministry has a CIPS (AIDS Information and Prevention Centre), where, among other things, the vaccine against smallpox is administered. Thanks to the expansion carried out by the Ministry of Health, all public hospitals of the Valencian Community with preventive medicine services (except HACLES) have been added, which already have doses of the smallpox vaccine.

The Ministry has already provided all the professionals and services involved with all the information on the vaccination scheme. It only remains to update it for travelers, taking into account the criteria established in its protocol by the Ministry of Health and which it must provide to the regional administrations in the near future. As its representatives announced last Wednesday at a meeting of the Public Health Commission at the request of the autonomous communities.

Health Minister Marciano Gomez said that “although the epidemiological situation in the Valencian Community is normal,

“At the Ministry, we wanted to continue this expansion measure because it is about providing all the means available to people at risk to facilitate immunization with the vaccine and prevent the disease.”

In this sense, the councilor sent a double message to the population in general and to risk groups in particular. “As experts point out, citizens in general can rest easy, since we are not facing a situation like Covid-19,” he noted. “In addition,” Gómez continued, “people at risk must know that the Generalitat has the necessary means to guarantee their vaccination.”

The head of the Ministry of Health insisted that “vaccination, recommended only for people belonging to certain risk groups, as well as epidemiological surveillance are two fundamental points for the prevention of IPC, and we have been working on this even before the WHO declared an international emergency.

Gomez explained that the vaccination scheme “was designed with a double aspect: on the one hand, measures were established for people belonging to risk groups and, on the other hand, for those exposed to confirmed cases.”

At-risk groups

The first group includes people at risk who should be vaccinated before they are potentially exposed to the disease and those who engage in risky sexual activity; especially, but not exclusively, men who have sex with men. And also those who are at risk due to the nature of their work, i.e. professionals working in specialized clinics, laboratory personnel or personnel responsible for disinfecting surfaces in high-risk areas.

In these cases, at-risk populations can access vaccination by scheduling an appointment by phone at the provincial CIPS, as has been the case up to now. What is new is that at-risk populations can now be vaccinated at the Preventive Medicine Service of the referral hospital. Referrals to this service will be made from health centres, satellite offices, continuing care sites or sexual and reproductive health centres. These people will also be referred to preventive medicine specialists from the emergency department or outpatient clinics for internal medicine, infectious diseases, dermatology and others.

As for those traveling to affected countries, the Ministry of Health has so far said that they can contact the International Vaccination Centers, where an individual risk assessment will be carried out, depending on the type of trip and the characteristics of the virus, and the traveler will decide on the appropriate action.

close contacts

The second group of people who are indicated for vaccination consists of those who have been exposed to the disease and includes all close contacts who have not had the disease, mainly people at risk of serious illness and complications, as well as people exposed to sanitary conditions and laboratories.

For this group, the Conselleria vaccination scheme establishes that the Public Health Centres of the Valencian Community will refer contacts identified when a case is detected to receive the vaccine.

In addition, if a person shows up at any of the health centres listed above and claims to have been in contact with a sick person, they will be referred to the appropriate preventive medicine service for vaccination assessment.

Finally, those healthcare workers who are included in risk groups will go to their occupational risk prevention department for referral to the Preventive Medicine Service for both pre- and post-exposure vaccination.