Event on "Covid-19 Pandemic and Vaccine" was held

The event was attended by under the direction of IGU, FHS Vice Dean Dr. A. Yüksel Barut, IGU, FHS Head of Child Development Department and Public Health Specialist Dr. Nurten Elkin and Istanbul Provincial Directorate of Health Public Health Services Vaccine Programs Unit Specialist Dr. Önder Yel participated as a speaker at the event. It started with the presentation of Dr. A. Yüksel Barut.

Meeting Director Dr. A. Yüksel BARUT, opened the meeting by stated in Article 12 of the Turkish Constitution, “Everyone has fundamental rights and freedoms that are inviolable, inalienable and indispensable. Fundamental rights and freedoms also include the duties and responsibilities of a person towards society, their family and other persons.’’ and in Article 72 of the General Hygiene Law, “If one of the diseases mentioned in Article 57 occurs or is suspected, the following measures are applied: (2) Administering serum or vaccine to patients or those exposed to the disease.”. He stated that every citizen should fulfill his responsibilities and that individuals have a share in every case that goes well or bad in a society. He explained the importance that individuals should use the opportunity to be vaccinated for to heal of the global epidemic. After reading the CV of the speakers, he gave the floor to Dr. Nurten ELKIN and Dr. Önder YEL.

Dr. Nurten ELKİN, by defining the concepts of health, disease and public health, emphasized that a long and healthy life is one of the most important issues that humanity has emphasized from past to present. She stated that preventive health services should take precedence over treatment and rehabilitative services in the protection and development of public health that it is not enough for individuals to be healthy. Also other individuals with whom they are in contact or live with should be healthy, especially in the control of infectious diseases. In the next section, she explained the concepts of contagious disease, epidemic and pandemic, and explained the harms of communicable diseases to society under headings. Among them, she stated that epidemics and infectious diseases will negatively affect social life, bring unexpected burdens on health services, cause disability and death in the society. And negatively affect the local or national economy because the fight against these diseases will bring an additional burden to the economies of the countries they will allocate to health expenditures. She stated that the Covid-19 pandemic is not the first epidemic that humanity has experienced. Since the oldest ages of history, there have been infectious diseases that cause social destruction and significant successes have been achieved against these diseases. She emphasized that social hygiene studies, improvements in water and waste systems, discovery and widespread use of antibiotics, vaccines and serums are important in these epidemics. Talking about protection and control measures during the epidemic, Dr. Nurten Elkin listed these precautions as source-oriented, transmission-oriented and healthy person, and explained the human immune mechanism and the factors that are effective in this mechanism. As of December 2019, the pandemic process we are in manifested itself as atypical cases of pneumonia in Wuhan/China. The effect was defined on 7 January 2020, and the cases spread in countries outside of China. And were declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11 and the first Covid-19 case in our country was reported in 11 March 2020.

She stated that social distance, using mask, personal and hand hygiene and the vaccine are important in protection from the pandemic. And those vaccines are among the greatest achievements of medicine to humanity and have saved the lives of millions of people. She concluded her speech with ‘’When each individual realizes his/her self-responsibility to protect himself/herself, he/she will actually protect the whole society, starting with his/her relatives’’.

Dr. Önder YEL started his presentation by explaining how the Covid-19 pandemic started. He emphasized the importance of vaccines in the control of this pandemic. He explained the types of vaccines and mentioned the characteristics of inactivated vaccines, adenovirus vaccines and mRNA vaccines. He stated that vaccines are safe biological products, therefore vaccines coming from abroad are analyzed, their safety evaluated and approved by the Turkish Medicines and Medical Devices Agency of the Turkish Ministry of Health. Dr. Önder Yel talked about Vaccine Logistics, which is important for all vaccines, and within this scope, the cold chain and vaccine tracking system.

He talked about the "Vaccination" system of our Ministry of Health, which was not applied in previous vaccinations. He emphasized that each vaccine administered has an identification number that it is known which vaccine was administered to which individual. And that "undesirable post-vaccine side effects" are closely monitored and recorded by the Ministry.

He also stated that fatigue, headache, fever, chills, muscle and joint pains, swelling, pain and redness at the injection site may be common side effects reported in Covid-19 vaccines. After stating the current status of Covid-19 vaccination, he announced "True Known Mistakes". For example; Are the Covid-19 Vaccines safe?, How are Covid-19 vaccines developed so quickly?, I follow the mask, distance and hygiene rules, I don't need to get vaccinated, I've had the Covid-19 disease, even if I'm not vaccinated, or all my vaccines are full since childhood, my immunity is strong so I don't need to be vaccinated. He explained by emphasizing the correct answers to the sentences that vaccines are ineffective. After both speakers and meeting director Dr. A. Yüksel Barut took the questions and directed them to the speakers. Questions about the numerical values ​​of antibody titers after vaccination and vaccination in chronic diseases, especially in cardiac patients were answered. At the end of the event, Dr. A. Yüksel Barut states that health literacy is important regardless of the level of education of individuals in preventing information pollution related to pandemics and vaccines. And that wrong and dirty information can make wrong decisions that may harm their health individually and socially; therefore, each individual and legally entitled to vaccination. He stated that it is important for our health to be healthy.
Dr. BARUT ended the meeting by thanking the contributions of IGU Faculty of Health Sciences, Istanbul Provincial Directorate of Health Director, speakers, participants, contributors, for the event that took place in the academic environment and shared the truth.