I couldn’t wait to get my vaccination; I was so anxious for myself and my 95-year-old mother.
I can’t begin to tell you the relief I felt when I, my mother, my husband, and my children were vaccinated because I trust in science and appreciate life.
Reaching high vaccination coverage 🩹 depends on all of us.
So, I want to send a special message to the millions of adults in the Caribbean who have yet to receive their COVID vaccines:
I am a medical doctor, wife, mother, and grandmother.
Now is the time to strengthen vaccination campaigns, organize vaccination drives and empower key groups like health workers and religious leaders to become vaccine advocates.
Many places – especially in the Caribbean – also lack robust vaccination programs for adults, so it’s been challenging to ensure high coverage 🩹 among adult populations.
And countries should have plans to reach those living in hard-to-reach areas both in rural zones and in parts of cities, because they are too often the last to receive care 🩺
Countries should hire and train enough health workers 👨🏾⚕️👩🏽⚕️ to deliver COVID vaccines without sacrificing staff for other essential services.
We urge countries to bolster their cold chain capacity to ensure so that it can absorb incoming supplies 📦
🔸 And finally, this is also the time for countries to invest in their vaccination programs.
But we remind countries 🌎 that the best way to protect the wellbeing of our children is to safely reopen schools.
Childhood vaccination is not a prerequisite for safe school reopening.
Healthy children and adolescents should be the last to receive COVID-19 vaccine doses 🩹 since they’re at lowest risk for severe disease.
