A national seniors advocacy group is giving the province a D- when it comes to safeguarding older residents with vaccines.
Canada’s National Seniors Advocacy Organization, also known as CanAge, advocates for those over the age of 65 in Canada.
The organization’s CEO, Laura Tamblyn Watts, says the advocacy group looks at three key areas before awarding marks.
“First is what is publicly funded for the vaccines, and those are the NACI-recommended vaccines,” Tamblyn Watts said.
“The second thing we do is look at how accessible those vaccines are. And the third thing we do is we judge based on how the government is communicating about adult vaccinations.”
More than 200,000 seniors live in Saskatchewan and getting vaccinated will give them a better chance at a healthy life, advocates say.
Dr. Nazeem Muhajarine, professor and chair of community health and epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan’s college of medicine, says seniors are particularly vulnerable, and vaccines are like an insurance policy to protect them from getting sick.
“I can’t emphasize more how important vaccines are, particularly for this demographic. You know, the seniors we are talking about are 65-plus individuals,” Muhajarine said.
However, according to CanAge, funding and distribution for NACI-recommended vaccines are not enough.
There are three vaccines critical to an adult’s health, those for shingles, pneumonia and the flu. And while the provincial government has done a good job in funding senior-specific flu vaccines, Tamblyn Watts says it falls short in other important areas.
“There is no coverage for the shingles vaccine. The NACI recommended shingles vaccine, which is highly effective. It’s simply not available unless you privately purchase it for several hundred dollars in Saskatchewan,” Tamblyn Watts said.
“The last piece is that we are really doing a bad job with getting the pneumonia vaccine into coverage and in the arms of people, particularly those most vulnerable. Now that there has been a brand-new pneumonia vaccine for about six months now, there seems to be no plan to do better and up that coverage to make it the most modern.
“So we’re really on our back foot in Saskatchewan.”
With the province receiving $61 million from the federal government earlier this year for health care spending, Tamblyn Watts says more proactive measures are needed to get vaccines in the arms of our seniors.
Global News reached out to the health ministry for comment but did not receive a response by deadline.