Tufton urges Jamaica to resist anti-vaccine misinformation as registry project advances

Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton is calling on Jamaicans to push back firmly against anti-vaccination views, saying such arguments have become more forceful since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tufton made the appeal recently at the Ministry of Health and Wellness’ Emergency Operations Centre Room in New Kingston, where officials signed the contract for the Electronic Immunisation Registry (EIR) Project.

The EIR is intended to capture, monitor and administer Jamaica’s immunisation information, while making vaccination records more accurate, easier to access and more efficiently managed.

Tufton said the pandemic helped to speed up the use of digital tools, but also gave false information wider reach. “The anti-vax movement has gotten a lot stronger… a louder voice… and they have leveraged the very technology that we’re using today to store through the platforms of social media and otherwise to launch their campaign against immunisation,” he said on April 17.

He argued that Jamaica cannot afford to accept claims that vaccines are harmful. “We must reject, at all costs, the argument that is being put forward from whencever it comes that immunisation or vaccines somehow are bad for you. The science doesn’t bear that out… the history doesn’t bear that out,” Tufton said.

The minister said Jamaica’s public health gains have rested heavily on immunisation programmes that are “safe, tried, tested, and peer-reviewed”. He pointed to the elimination and control of illnesses such as polio as proof that vaccination has protected the country from severe health consequences.

Tufton also noted that every medical intervention carries some small level of risk, but said the advantages of vaccination far exceed the possible downsides. He said the Government and the public health system remain committed to using the safest available approaches to immunisation.

He described the push to upgrade health systems as part of a sustained obligation to Jamaicans. By combining newer technology with established vaccination programmes, he said the Government wants to improve the country’s ability to respond to future health threats.

“This endorsement and moving forward in this way is a commitment to the future, to making it easier and more efficient, and to supporting immunisation generally as part of our health response to a population that increasingly gets vulnerable over time, based on environmental considerations or otherwise,” Tufton stated.