Faculty of Medicine to Support Public Debate on Immunization

Academic community has the expertise and responsibility to participate actively in the public debate on immunization and Montenegro's Faculty of Medicine will contribute to that by including both professors of different profiles and students in the campaigns for MMR and coronavirus immunization. This was one of the key conclusions from today's meeting between the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine prof. dr Miodrag Radunovic and UNICEF Montenegro Representative Juan Santander.

„If an epidemic of morbille coincides with the coronavirus pandemic, there is no health system in the world which could handle it. For this reason, it is crucial that we all contribute to raising public awareness about the benefits of vaccines and that we bring back the trust in science“, prof. dr Radunovic said.

UNICEF reminded that public opinion surveys conducted by Ipsos research agency with their and the support of the British Embassy in Podgorica show that citizens trust the most health experts on the topic of immunization.

„Health experts have the trust of the community and need to have a leadership role in the public debate on immunization. To reduce the number of citizens who are concerned due to various conspiracy theories and disinformation, it is essential to offer them opinions of experts and to direct them to credible and reliable sources of information on immunization such as the Faculty of Medicine, Institute for Public Health, Clinical Centre, local health centres, Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization“, Santander pointed out.

Faculty of Medicine and UNICEF will cooperate in the coming period on strengthening capacities of the health system to respond to numerous challenges in order to improve the access and quality of health services for children and families all over the country.