Post 00647e : Combating Rumours

POST 00647E : COMBATING RUMOURS Follow-up on Post 00619E and 00643E 8 March 2004 ___________________________________ Note : Following the posting of the TechNet21 Annual Report, some members asked the meaning of the various terms in the statistics tables about use of our site. True that I should have put these in the report. So here they are : Visits : number of visits to our site calculated by the number of entrances by opening the home page. If one visits another page of our site and come back to the home page it's not counted again. Pages : number of pages of our site that you visit if you surf on it. For example, if one goes to "Archives" and the "Meeting" pages, it will count 2 pages. Files : number of files downloaded, corresponding to documents stored on our site. For example, the meeting attendance forms or the IVORY COSTE presentation that we just posted. Sites : number of visits to other sites from our site (our banner will remain on top of the page). Kb : number of kilobytes downloaded Hits : number of active mouseclicks on our site __________________________________________ Hande Harmanci (mailto:[log in to unmask]) from Marmara University, Turkey, shares an article published in the journal "Public Health" { Public Health 117 (2003) } reviewing reasons for non-vaccination during NIDs in Istanbul. Rumours are one of the identified reasons even though with much less impact than what happens in Nigeria. Hande is the leading author. In January, WHO issued a "Position Statement" signed by Dr. Daniel Tarantola directed specifically at Nigeria. You will also find the document attached. ----------------------------------- I believe that as a group we must react to the Nigerian situation. Global achievements are threatened, for now in neighbouring countries, but it is only a question of time before importations happen elsewhere, mainly in Europe. Delays caused by this situation to the Initiative as a whole means that the world is denied the full benefits of reaching the objective. Billions invested not only do not yield expected dividends but more investments are made necessary. If rumours have such an impact and result in polio cases, indigenous or imported, what should we do? Isn't there criminal liability somewhere? This is my opinion, how should we react? Would love your reactions. The Moderator __________________________________________ We also had problems with rumours in Turkey about NIDs starting with the second year of implementation. The main rumour was that the vaccine causes sterility. Even though there are no structured studies reporting on this, health personnel "knew" that this was the case. (Still, I believe that if it is not documented, it doesn't exist.) When I was the health administrator in one of the districts of Istanbul, we just tried to overcome the situation through health personnel. Those with better communication skills could vaccinate more children obviously. Luckily, the rumour waned in subsequent years. I sincerely do not know how this happened though. It may have been us, the health team, or some other factor or most probably, a combination of those... I am attaching a published document on reasons for non-vaccination in 1999 NIDs in Istanbul. This document mentions some information about rumours. I hope it would be useful to those interested. Warm regards, Prof.Dr.Hande Harmanci, Marmara University Medical Faculty, Department of Public Health, Haydarpasa, Istanbul, Turkey ______________________________________________________________________________ Visit the TECHNET21 Website at http://www.technet21.org You will find instructions to subscribe, a direct access to archives, links to reference documents and other features. ______________________________________________________________________________ To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message to : mailto:[log in to unmask] Leave the subject area BLANK In the message body, write unsubscribe TECHNET21E ______________________________________________________________________________ The World Health Organization and UNICEF support TechNet21. The TechNet21 e-Forum is a communication/information tool for generation of ideas on how to improve immunization services. It is moderated by Claude Letarte and is hosted in cooperation with the Centre de internationale en san, Canada (http://www.ccisd.org) ______________________________________________________________________________ ##text## ##text##