CGTN Europe interviewed John Johnson, vaccination advisor for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)
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00:00John Johnson is the vaccination advisor for Médecins Sans Frontières.
00:05There's a lot of different factors, but there's a very simple main factor behind why there's a resurgence of measles.
00:12In Europe especially, it's low vaccination rates.
00:16And a lot of that happened during the COVID pandemic.
00:20There was a reduction in uptake of health care services and vaccination.
00:24And we saw a global drop in immunization rates around the world of about 2% during that time.
00:31And that 2% doesn't sound like a lot, but with a very contagious disease like measles,
00:36that drop in immunization coverage is enough that we're going to start seeing outbreaks.
00:41And many of us will never have seen measles.
00:44I mean, what is it? What does it look like? What does it mean for the patient?
00:49So measles is a respiratory pathology.
00:53You get it through the air.
00:55And the symptoms that you see are often in children.
00:59It's a disease we typically see in children.
01:02It's a rash, a fever, a cough, a runny nose.
01:06And then about 10 to 25% of children will go on to have severe symptoms.
01:12And they can have respiratory illness.
01:14They can have brain swelling.
01:16Measles is one of the main causes of blindness around the world.
01:19And then the mortality rate, the number of children with measles that will go on to die is between 1 in 500, 1 in 1,000 children.
01:28So it's not just a benign disease.
01:31It can be quite a severe disease.
01:33COVID, of course, around the world meant perhaps many communities were suspicious of vaccines.
01:39But your message on measles would be what?
01:44Well, you know, I think people don't realize that vaccines are extremely safe.
01:51When we talk about safety in medicine, we look at the benefit and the risk.
01:54When you're talking about a cancer drug, the benefit is maybe limited.
02:02And sometimes there's very high risks that go along with that.
02:05But you're treating, you know, a very dangerous disease like cancer.
02:09And even if it has some bad side effects, we can accept if the benefit is better than the side effects.
02:16The problem when we talk about vaccines is we're not treating an existing disease.
02:20We're treating a future risk.
02:23And so people don't necessarily see that the risks are necessarily worth the benefits.
02:29The risks of vaccines are extremely, extremely low for this very reason, because we have a very high bar for safety with vaccines.
02:36And I think it's important that people understand that vaccines are really one of the most important public health interventions that's ever been developed.
02:45Right up there with safe drinking water and improved hygiene.
02:49So what can we do then as parents, as schools, communities?
02:55What can we do to turn the tide on this?
02:59I think educating people is important, but I think also being able to have open conversations.
03:03What we've seen where I work is when people maybe are a bit hesitant about vaccines.
03:09And we've seen a lot of vaccine hesitancy as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
03:15In fact, the most important thing is not to try to convince anybody of anything, but really try to understand what their concerns are and be able to answer their questions.
03:24And I think as health professionals and I think as political leaders, we need to be ready to take the time to have these conversations and tease out the misinformation from the facts.
03:35Thanks.
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03:35Thanks.
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03:37Thanks.