Transcript
DR ANANDA AMARANSINGHE: Normally deaths from any vaccines, in our experience, is majority more than 90 percent are due to coincidence. Coincidence means that it has nothing to do with vaccine or vaccination. That child had some illness, and that illness caused the death but it has happened after vaccination, and so that is why we call it vaccine related. Normally when we do detailed investigations, this is what we see in most cases. But in this case, we can see there are two children.
When two children die in the same place, it is very unlikely it can be coincidence. So we wanted to check as there can be two reasons we are investigating under. One is whether it is really due to vaccine reactions because sometimes vaccines, which can and is extremely rare, so for MMR vaccine, it has safe statistics. One in one million children, can develop anaphylaxsis, and you may have heard as a journalist anapylaxis can be caused by many things, even other medicines, antibiotics and even for food. It is an individual response. So that is the one area we are looking whether these two children had developed anaphylaxsis and then our concern is why these two children might have developed anaphylaxis in the same place.
SARA VUI-TALITU: Has there been much progress in the Samoa investigations into the deaths?
AA: So what we have done so far, is that a foreign pathologist came from Australia and they did post mortem with a Samoan pathologist, and they have taken some samples back, and so they will do further investigations and they let us know.
SV: Right...
AA: And one direction is vaccine reaction, that is what we are thinking. The second one is what we call the immunisation error. Immunisation error means once we are handling the vaccine sometimes there can be some mistakes. Because this vaccine it comes as a powder, a freeze dried powder, and the manufacturer gives one vial powder and one vial they call dilutent. It is like saline water.
So for example, if manufacturer give you 100 vials of vaccine, they also supply 100 diluent vials. Before the vaccination the dilutent should mix with the powder. This powder needs to mix with diluent provided by the manufacturer. Sometimes, and we have seen this rarely in some other countries, that staff are busy or get confused and instead of diluent, they mix MMR with another substance which is inside the fridge. And so then, sometimes that MMR vaccine is mixed in with another medical product and so what will happen then? When you give it to a child, then that child will react to the one side vaccine and the other side medical product.
SV: You know a lot of people in Samoa are kind of scared now. What is the one thing you would say to Samoan people about vaccinations?
AA: I think what we need to understand is that we are technical people, but here we have lost two children and we have grave concern and sympathy to all these families and all the country, that is quite natural. But it is also our job also to reassure the people one thing is that vaccine is now safe for people generally and keeps people safe from deadly diseases. All these diseases were killers from many years ago but now thanks to these vaccine, we don't see the diseases and that is why people don't really understand the gravity of diseases. Measles has actually killed millions of children previously and when you get the measles, the children died from pneumonia or encephalitis or diptheria or the disease tetanus.
But now you see they don't die because of the vaccine and now I request you and I am really appreciative if you can give that message, those lives saved from deadly diseases by vaccines. So therefore vaccines are safe and we have to continue with vaccines. Of course the governments and the vaccine manufacturers they have taken their highest effort to ensure highest quality and safety of the vaccines and it's a continuous process. These diseases are a concern we understand but we hope people will keep on trusting vaccines and we hope people will get their children into clinics and keep on getting vaccinated.