Bosnia’s Tuzla Canton is facing a drop in the number of unvaccinated children, with 25 percent of all newborns from the canton not being vaccinated in 2018 – the percentage that was the same throughout the past five years, epidemiologist and head of the epidemiology department Blasko Topalovic said on Monday.

“We have an army of unvaccinated children, some 5,000 of them. If a virus gets hold of that group, everyone will get sick due to low collective immunity. Should this happen, we can expect many complications and full pediatric clinics,” Topalovic said at a press conference in the central-Bosnian city of Tuzla.

Alarmed by the situation, paediatricians from the Children’s Diseases Clinic in Tuzla said the situation in this canton and the entire country is also devastating because the suppliers are often late with their deliveries.

“We have the funds, but the vaccine against TB has not arrived yet. It’s not up to us, but the suppliers. We’ve finally managed to get a three-year contract guaranteeing a better supply,” Topalovic added.

Vaccination of children is mandatory, said the Head of the Immunology Department at Tuzla hospital president of the Association of Pediatricians in Bosnia Fahrija Skokic.

Vaccination is not mandatory in France, but it has the best percentage of vaccinated children, she said.

But she noted that this is because they have a well-developed awareness of diseases, and protection, Bosnia already sees consequences of this, she added, because an epidemic has endangered the lives of children.