[ad_1]
Professor Vytautas Usonis, a licensed medical doctor with more than 30 years of experience as a pediatrician, reveals the country’s three decades of vaccine history.
Photo by Sigismund Gedvila / 15min / Vytautas Usonis
Tragic results of the investigation
– After regaining independence, immunobiological drugs and vaccines were almost immediately abandoned from the Soviet Union, although at that time the alternatives were very unclear, due to lack of money, external support had to be sought. Why was it decided to stop using Soviet vaccines?
– With the help of the Danish State Institute Statens Serum Institut, we carried out a study on the composition of vaccines. The results were tragic: I was unpleasantly surprised by the quality of the vaccines, their immunogenicity.
The results were tragic: I was unpleasantly surprised by the quality of the vaccines, their immunogenicity.
In fact, the reason for the rejection was only because of the quality of the vaccines.
We have started working with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other organizations.
The assessment of our situation and the condition that we saw at the time was worth doing something. And we did: in 1992, the first national immunoprophylaxis program was approved.
Based on the program recommended by WHO for European countries, it was adapted to Lithuania.
One of the main claims of this program was that in Lithuania only vaccines that meet international standards should be vaccinated.
AFP / “Scanpix” nuotr./Skiepijimas
Soviet vaccines did not meet those standards. Since 1993, we have completely abandoned Soviet vaccines.
At that time, we received a lot of help from Denmark, who had been funding our vaccination program for several years since 1993.
They didn’t give us the money, but the European standard vaccines produced in Denmark. They have been vaccinated for several years.
Subsequently, as recommended by the WHO to developing countries so far, Denmark’s contribution decreased and the Lithuanian state gradually took over the funding of the immunoprophylaxis program. That was the beginning.
– You say that Soviet vaccines were abandoned because of their poor quality. Does that mean they were ineffective?
– It cannot be said that Soviet vaccines were not suitable for use at all: the vaccine achieved very good results in the management of various diseases: diphtheria, pertussis, polio, smallpox.
The problem is that in recent years, starting in the eighties and nineties, skeptical sentiment against vaccines has become very prevalent throughout the former Soviet Union, as well as in Lithuania.
[ad_2]
