As the World continue to intensify efforts to overcome the COVID-19 Pandemic, the public have been assured of the usefulness of the COVID-19 Vaccines which are said to build the human immunity against the virus without any untoward effect to the human system so far as research has shown.

This hint was dropped by Prof. Christopher Yilgwan a public health Expert and Professor of Pediatrics who is also the co-chairman Federal Ministry of Health COVID-19 Case management pillar community of practice who was Guest on KT 103.9 FM Jos on Tuesday 26^th July, 2022 while giving Professional advice on the COVID-19 Vaccine Safety on the Special COVID-19 Awareness Programme put together by Friday Bako with sponsorship from Centre for Information Technology And Development (CITAD)/MacArthur Foundation.

The Public Health Specialist disclosed that the vaccines in circulation have been certified by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be safe, effective and useful for full use by the public urging the people to ignore all fake news and conspiracy theories aimed at misleading the general public about the vaccines. He said having taken three dozes of the vaccines, he has not been affected in anyway and admonished the people to ensure they are vaccinated.

“Vaccines are foreign bodies introduced into our body to help boost immunity and help our body get prepared to fight infections and the COVID-19 Vaccines passed through several processes and approved for human use. There is no way any vaccine will be allowed to be brought into the public domain without it passing through all the processes and COVID-19 Vaccines passed through the appropriate stages of pre-clinical, clinical and post-clinical trials of testing vaccines” he said.

He said the COVID-19 vaccines were developed faster than expected as the processes were built on previous experiences with those involved in the production of other vaccines in the past with no shortcut made nor was there compromise of standard in the development of the COVID-19 Vaccines. He argued that the same system used in producing the vaccine used by human is the same being put in place to develop the COVID-19 Vaccines without compromise. He urged the public to trust the system used to develop, distribute and store vaccines which he said has not failed and are same with the system used in the past.

On defective vaccines, the Health Professional said any vaccine that has been confirmed to have lost its potency is recalled which is general with drugs. He disclosed that the World Health Organization responsible for international public health has a dashboard assessable to the public online tracking the vaccine dozes distributed, administered and side effect of the vaccines globally, in that if any vaccine is noticed not to be performing according to expectation, such vaccine is recalled.

He said the information that people are dying after the uptake of the vaccines is false, misleading and should be treated as fake. He expressed displeasure on how misinformation is affecting the uptake of the vaccines. According to him, misinformation preys on the ignorance of the people. He went further to state that the public should get information from trusted sources especially WHO, National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) and Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) instead of relying on hearsays. He said the benefits of taking the vaccines far outweighs the risk of not taking same.

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Health Expert, Prof. Chris Yilgwan Says COVID-19 Vaccines Useful and Builds Human Immunity with No Untoward Effect