Doctors attack the amendment presented by Lega senator Claudio Borghi to the waiting list decree to cancel the vaccination obligation for children introduced by the Lorenzin law. From infectious disease specialists to pediatricians, the chorus is unanimous: vaccinations are essential for the protection of the little ones.
Bassetti
Ironic Matteo Bassetti, director of Infectious Diseases at the San Martino Polyclinic Hospital in Genoa, notes that “Claudio Borghi has managed to do something that has never been done before: to reunite the entire scientific community, and I think even a part of its majority, on the value of vaccines. He was brilliant in his statement, we must thank him. People with common sense – he tells Adnkronos Salute – of the majority and the opposition have distanced themselves from his proposal. Let him deal with economics, if he is capable, and I hope he has more skills than those he has demonstrated in the field of medicine and science. Borghi’s was a wicked proposal – reiterates Bassetti – aimed at attacking the health of the weakest: children”.
Ciccozzi
A line also clearly shared by the epidemiologist Massimo Ciccozzi. “Vaccines are a tool for public health prevention. Thinking of removing the obligation for children’s vaccinations is taking Italy back a hundred years. How many lives have they saved from smallpox, tetanus, measles, diphtheria, polio? Personally – Ciccozzi told Adnkronos Salute – I am against the obligation for the flu vaccine or, now, for Covid. But the pediatric population is as fragile as the elderly population and must be protected. In the last year, measles has caused epidemics throughout Europe, thinking of removing the vaccination obligation today – from a public health point of view – would be the worst choice”.
Farnetes
“Abolishing mandatory vaccinations would be like joking with life“, echoes pediatrician Italo Farnetani. Especially for the anti-measles one, he underlines to Adnkronos Salute, “going back would be like condemning some children to death every year”.
“The vaccinations against measles, rubella, mumps and chickenpox”, which the amendment would like to no longer be mandatory, but recommended, “are all important – explains the expert, full professor of Pediatrics at the University Ludes-United Campus of Malta – but the one for measles is the most life-saving”, if we consider that “measles still today causes small epidemics and cases of death. Even in Italy”, warns the doctor, and even after the “70s of the last century, since when we have had an effective vaccine against this infection. Unfortunately, until 2017 there was no mandatory vaccination and, although the measles vaccination is strongly recommended by pediatricians – insists Farnetani – it has always been little practiced by parents, with percentages for many years around 30%, very far from the 95% coverage that would allow the disappearance of the disease”.
The pediatrician recalls that “as early as the 1980s, the World Health Organization had launched the goal of eradicating measles globally, as happened with smallpox, but unfortunately the goal has failed and continues not to be achieved precisely because there are still large numbers of over-7s who are not vaccinated. Without mandatory vaccination, there will never be a sufficient number of vaccinated children.“, warns Farnetani who calls into question the Constitution: by abolishing the obligation, he concludes, “article 32 would also be trampled upon. Instead of guaranteeing the right to health, people would be left defenseless against a potentially serious and lethal disease”.
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