By Muna Muday
Immunization is one of the most impactful public health measures averting over 4 million deaths every year globally. In addition, routine childhood immunizations bring children and families in Tennessee and around the world into contact with health systems, providing an avenue for the delivery of other basic health services and laying the foundation for primary health care.
However, The COVID-19 pandemic has had a considerable negative impact on the vaccination rate of children in Tennessee and globally which caused many children to fall behind in their routine childhood immunizations. Additional efforts and resources are needed to ensure that these children are catching-up with their routine immunizations to stay healthy. Although some progress has been made, many children and communities are still at high risk of vaccine- preventable diseases, especially black children and children in the developing world.
Moreover, Tennessee has a diverse population where many foreign children will have to visit their families back home so it is important to ensure that they are immunized while traveling, which is very critical to our global health security as Tennesseans. As I write, I came from Somalia in East Africa, a country that is currently facing on-going conflict, and where many children are not receiving any vaccines. Similarly, I lost my older siblings in Somalia due to vaccine -preventable diseases at an infant age. As the number of unimmunized children grows with time, this exposes communities to disease outbreaks and will increase the morbidity and mortality from vaccine preventable diseases.
Senator Bill Hagerty is uniquely positioned in his capacity as one of the ranking members of the State and Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee to stop the reduction of the federal immunization grant to support children immunization programs and force more accountability to protect children from vaccine preventable diseases in Tennessee and globally.
Muda Muday can be contacted at 615-609-7640 or mmuday17@gmail.com