Children get taught about vaccines

Anthropologist and children’s book author Lebohang Masango led a digital children’s book-reading event titled ‘All about Vaccines’ on June 24 via Zoom.

Masango and her guest, Dr Nokukhanya Mdlalose who is a virologist, discussed the historical use of vaccines to fight diseases and delved into their importance in protecting people from serious illnesses.

The Midrand author said the main idea behind the event was to gather parents and their children to discuss the importance of vaccinations.

Dr Mdlalose was able to give expert advice and answers to questions and concerns regarding vaccines and children, especially the Covid-19 vaccine that is currently being rolled out. “The book that I chose, All About Vaccines by Bridget Gongol, says that it is a read for parents and children… So parents can explain anything that the children do not understand.

“As a children’s book author and because I do work a lot with children, it just made sense for my contribution to be centred around children.”

Masango said that in the reading, she kept mentioning to her audience that there is accessible information to anyone who wanted to read it. “Children are also important carriers of information and education into the household. Parents, or grandparents, and siblings … can be introduced to it through a child who has learnt something new at school or in a book and that is the wonderful thing about books in general.

“That information is able to pass to so many people and affect so many people positively. Definitely the idea was to give children an understanding so that it is something that they would know and hopefully be able to pass on to others as well,” she added.

Masango added that although they did the book reading in English, they are grateful for the work being done by The Solidarity Fund in leading the response in terms of getting information out to the people in a number of languages.

“They have made the strides to make sure that the information has been translated into different languages and people are able to hopefully access them in the same way, as incorrect information is being freely passed around on social media,” she concluded.

Details: Follow Lebohang Masango on Twitter @LebohangWrites and on Instagram on Lebohang Masango to for the book-reading recording.