Each day, vaccination teams from the Departmental Health Services of Oruro travel to different areas to vaccinate children under the age of 5.
Oruro is one of nine departments in Bolivia where vaccination coverage was adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Oruro is located in the western part of the country.
A few drops will immunize against polio. The vaccination teams visit the homes of Oruro families to find children who were unable to get their vaccine doses.
Soledad Ingala, the mother of a child with hydrocephalus (water on the brain), tells others about the importance of vaccines for children under 5. She is going through a very difficult time with her son, yet knows that vaccines are necessary to keep her little one from suffering worse complications to his health.
Nursing aide Nancy Vargas performs health checkups every day for children under 5 at markets or in surrounding communities. Her goal is to find unvaccinated children.
Newborns who do not fully develop in the womb are put in an incubator, where health workers monitor their development. Once they catch up in their development, they will get the appropriate vaccines.
Then the newborns are vaccinated with the first doses they need and are taken to their mother to continue breastfeeding.
The medical staff fights day in and day out alongside the newborns in incubators to restore them to health and give each one all the care they need to improve.
Vaccination teams and medical staff perform checkups and prepare reports on each child, tracking their vaccines to ensure that they get the right ones at the right time to promote healthy growth..
Soledad Ingala thanks the teams and doctors who did everything possible to save her son’s life when he was born.
She advises other mothers to vaccinate their children.
