This was confirmed by the Minister of the Ministry of Health, Tuitama Leao Dr. Talalelei Tuitama in his interview with the media.
According to Tuitama the MMR vaccination cannot be on hold for long because it is one of the important vaccinations that a child needs to have to protect them from diseases.
He also said while the ban has been uplifted there are requirements that nurses, doctors and the ministry as a whole needs to follow to avoid any more problems.
“We have informed all hospitals to in Samoa to get on to the MMR vaccination again because the children especially the babies are vulnerable and can easily get sick,” said Tuitama.
“The children need to be vaccinated not only with the MMR vaccination but with all the other vaccination.
“The reason why the vaccination was on hold it was because of the incident that involves two toddlers from Savaii and there was a fault in delivering the service.”
Speaking of requirements that needs to be done Tuitama said one of them is that the nurses cannot give the MMR vaccination to any child unless a doctor is present.
“So the vaccination are done in specific days and specific time when a doctor is available so when something goes wrong the doctor is there to assist,” he said.
“We are strict on this because we don’t want what happened before to repeat.
“We want the people especially parents to know that we have learned from the incident and we are working hard to ensure that the incident does not repeat again.”
The other requirement the minister mention is that parents must agree for their children to be vaccinated.
“I know that was one of the biggest issue is that most parents said they were never ask by nurses if they want their children to be vaccinated,” he said.
“Now parents must give their okay before we can go ahead with everything else.
“They must sign a consent form before we can give the vaccination.
“If the parents say no then there is nothing we can do but to say okay.
“There will be better programs in the future to consolidate this initiative to ensure the children are safe and ensure that what had happened before will not be repeated.
“So these are some things that we have done to better our services but at the moment we also working on getting back the confident and the trust of the parents to the health sector because at the end of the day that is the most important thing.
“If we don’t have that trust between the parent and the doctor or nurses then our work is pointless.”
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