By TANYA SMITH-CARTWRIGHT

tsmith-cartwright@tribunemedia.net

UNIONS representing healthcare workers have challenged official statements that claim that only 50 percent of their members have been vaccinated.

On Sunday, Chief Medical Officer Dr Pearl McMillan revealed that about 50 percent of healthcare workers employed throughout the country have taken COVID-19 vaccines.

The Tribune spoke to Nurse Amancha Williams, head of Bahamas Nurses Union, and D John Dillett, vice president of the Consultant Physicians Staff Association, who are doubtful that the percentage quoted is accurate.

“We have never had a problem at all in individuals getting vaccinated,” Nurse Williams said. “Vaccinations, at the end of the day, should be a choice. Everyone has a choice in taking it.”

“How can they say only 50 percent of the healthcare workers are vaccinated when persons went off to the States to get vaccinated? So we don’t see that as a true picture. I think it’s more. They went to the States to get vaccinated because they wanted choices for their families.

“The union encourages nurses with comorbidities and difficulties to go into counselling and find out from their doctors in order to make the right choice. If it is, then get vaccinated because we don’t want you to die.”

Nurse Williams feels Bahamian health officials are handling the matter in the wrong way. She said the focus should not be on healthcare workers, but instead on the general population.

“I keep saying they (government officials) keep concentrating on the healthcare workers, but they should be concentrating on the public,” she said. “They keep talking about the healthcare workers and so the public says, ‘if the healthcare workers don’t believe in what you’re doing, how is it that you’re going to sell it to me?’ And, that is where the campaign went wrong. I say that to Dr McMillan and Dr Dahl-Regis.

“Concentration should be on the public with education. Right now I have nurses ready to sign up for the Pfizer (shot). They are calling me. They want to know, how can they go about getting someone to come to them and vaccinate them on the job with the Pfizer vaccine? They work shifts and going to the various centres and standing on the line to be vaccinated, like any other person, takes up a lot of time.”

 The BNU president said her members are always encouraged to do what is best and that the union cannot mandate vaccinations. She said persons must be allowed to “sort out their affairs”, know the benefits and to feel free to make their own choice.

 Dr Dillett believes the statistics given are old and is asking health officials for the data which gave this figure.

 “We know that they have cited those statistics some months ago so we have to query as to whether or not that is accurate,” Dr Dillett said. “We would be appreciative if they provide the sources of this data for public consumption so that we can truly understand and see if that is still the case. I feel it has changed significantly over the past months.

 “As a union, we do support our members in taking the vaccine. We do acknowledge that it is a personal decision and each individual has to make that decision with family and their personal physicians giving advice. In the health community, certainly the majority of health officials and medical and clinical staff do support the vaccine.

 “It is an individual decision, there is no mandate and no one is forcing anyone at this stage to have to take the vaccine. I acknowledge that there is some vaccine hesitancy out there and so we also have to acknowledge that that hesitancy is in healthcare personnel as well.”

Dr Dillett said it’s an individual decision because everyone has unique medical issues.

“There are some persons who I am sure are worried because these are relatively new vaccines,” he said. “There are many instances where some individuals who produce new treatments and we learn later on that there are some negative reaction or some negative results after a number of months or years. So people are apprehensive.

“I know as professionals that we do believe in having as much information as possible to be able to make clinical decisions. Because the vaccine has only been around now for a short period of time, I think just as a matter of caution, persons just want to know a bit more before doing something.”