Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:27 pm on 28 June 2023.
Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan
Labour
2:27,
28 June 2023
Well, thanks very much, and you're quite right to highlight the fact that, actually, in terms of childhood vaccinations, we don't have a bad level, but, actually, the pandemic pushed things back a bit. So, we do have about 20 per cent of the child population who are perhaps not taking up that opportunity.
So, what are we going to do about it? Well, we're taking that national immunisation framework and making sure that we take those lessons that we learned during the pandemic, making sure that we look at the evidence. What worked during that roll-out? What was best practice? And how do we avoid that unnecessary variation across Wales? What we're trying to do is to make sure that this is being led by local teams, who are engaging and empowering their own communities to understand the advantages of taking up the offer of vaccination. I think it's really important that we make this easy to understand, that we communicate well, that people understand the risks of not having vaccinations. So, each health board now is being asked to develop a vaccine equity strategy and a programme of work with dedicated public health input. So, that's how we're going to address the issue that you put forward.
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