Medical fraternity must get on board

Persons are being encouraged to reach out to their private medical practitioners should they have any concerns with taking the COVID-19 vaccine.

Doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine arrived in Barbados earlier this month and with it, a plethora of questions from the public.

During an interview with The Barbados Advocate, Dr. Michelle Reece, Assistant Professor, Department of Public Health, College of Health and Human Services, revealed that persons had real concerns about the vaccine and wanted to know if they had chronic conditions, an autoimmune disease or were immunocompromised due to taking cancer treatment, if they should still take the vaccine.

Dr. Reece believed that these were legitimate concerns and was of the view that persons needed to contact their primary physicians if they had questions that were specific to their health status.

“Because for example, if you have rheumatoid arthritis and I have rheumatoid arthritis, the answer may not be the same because you may have some other condition and so a general public answer is not the way we can go,” she said.

“So here are the facts: vaccines are going to reduce death and severe disease if people should get it, but if you have very specific questions or fears regarding your own health status, that is something that you have to talk about with your primary physician.

“Yes, that puts pressure on the primary and family doctors in Barbados, because they already have stress trying to meet the demands of their consumers and then here we are saying that you’re going to become a call centre for people who know your number. But that is what exactly needs to happen.”

While stressing that she was not intending to make a political statement, she believed that the information regarding the vaccines did not necessarily need to solely rest in the hands of Government or their call centres.

She said that the entire medical fraternity needed to get on board for this to happen as she was of the view that it was necessary in order to calm the fears that persons had relating to the vaccine going forward.