“In terms of what we call vaccine-preventable diseases, the status in Ukraine is that the population has not been vaccinated to get enough immunity, as in many other European countries or like the US,” White told CNN.
“Given that was the baseline, and now we have a situation where that system or routine immunization is no longer working because the health system has been disrupted — and on top of that, there’s the general public health situation, so many cities where lack of access to healthcare is compromised, some places where they don’t have the water supply they used to have, they don’t have electricity, there are sanitation problems – so all these risk factors stack on top of each other, which means that there is an increased risk,” White said, referring to diseases such as polio, cholera and measles.
“There was an outbreak of polio in Ukraine last year,” White said. “Ukraine was the last country in Europe to have a cholera outbreak in 2011, and that was in Mariupol. And as you probably know, Mariupol now has significant problems with water and sanitation and an inability to carry out basic daily activities around hygiene.”
The city of Mariupol remains one of the main sites of Russian attacks and damage. “There’s also a risk of measles,” White said. “The initial vaccination status was not particularly high.”
White added that he has heard of some doctors and volunteers who have tested positive for Covid-19 in Ukraine, but “testing capacity is minimal at the moment.”
“So there are a lot of people who still remain vulnerable to infection.”
Source: CNN Brasil
