General participants in Pernik and immunizations
The series of seminars for doctors working in outpatient care continues with a focus on general practitioners in Pernik region.
Colleagues in the mining town were pleased to communicate with a team of narrow specialists in their fields on the issues of vaxinoprophylaxis.
The psychologist Georgi Todorov presented different techniques of communication between doctors and patients by examining the personality types and how the doctor communicates with each of them on the problems of vaccines.
Ass. Lyubomira Nikolaeva-Gmb, Head of Virology at the National Center for Communicable and Parasitic Diseases, speaks to doctors about covid-19 vaccines, the durability of immunity in illness and after a vaccine. It has sparked audience interest with facts about how vaccine immunity works and why vaccines are safe.
Dr. Natalia Spiridova, epidemiologist at the Ministry of Health presented to doctors problems of the national immunization calendar, topical issues related to polio, chickenpox, smallpox and other infectious diseases.
A lot of interest in the audience was caused precisely smallpox in the context of the increased cases of monkey pox, which originates from the same family of viruses.
Doctors were interested in when immunization against this disease was stopped in Bulgaria, but it turns out that such accurate data are not detected. It was recalled that in 1980 the WHO declared Smallpox defeated and suggested that all countries decide for themselves when to stop vaccinating against this disease.
Dr. Spiridonova said that the smallpox vaccine is placed right hand in the shoulder and leaves a very specific scar, while the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis is placed on the left shoulder and both scars are visibly distinguishable from each other.
An important part of the discussion with doctors was also the supervision of communicable diseases in the context of a refugee flow to Bulgaria. Temporary guidelines for immunizations and reimmunizations in children who arrived from Ukraine, which the Ministry of Health issued earlier this year, have sparked interest. It is a known fact that the immunization coverage in Ukraine is much lower than necessary, but it is an advantage that the calendars of Bulgaria and Ukraine are almost no different, except for the type of polio vaccine.
The epidemiologist told of the circumstances surrounding the introduction of the type B haemophilus influenza vaccine into our immunisation calendar in 2010. A few years after the vaccine was included, cases of meningitis among children dramatically decreased.
The seminars for doctors in outpatient care are organized by the Astra Forum Foundation with the support of a coalition of partners – ministry of health and RSI, America for Bulgaria Foundation, the Bulgarian Association of Innovative Medicine and ArPharm, the WHO and UNICEF offices in Bulgaria.
