Vaccines, Bovi (Umbria1 Local Health Authority): “To encourage anti-zoster central family doctors”

“With the new National Vaccine Prevention Plan (Pnpv) 2023-2025 we have the possibility with general practitioners to be able to expand our vaccination range, especially with regard to Herpes zoster, a systemic disease that affects hundreds of thousands of people every year people with short and long-term consequences, from skin rash to chronic pain to possible meningitis and encephalitis, so it is absolutely important to prevent it.” Thus at Adnkronos Salute Michela Bovi, general practitioner Fimmg Usl Umbria1 and member of the regional vaccine commission, during the work of the Fimmg Regione Umbria project entitled ‘The role of the general practitioner in the management of anti-herpes zoster vaccination: new perspectives to protect the patient’, underway in Perugia.

The Umbria Fimmg project for Herpes zoster vaccination “that we wanted and implemented is a first step to encourage membership”, explains Bovi. “All the general practitioners in the region were involved to clarify what the Pnpv 2023-2025 is and above all to give precise guidelines regarding the formation of cohorts of our patients at risk of herpes zoster. the planning of the vaccination campaign for herpes zoster is of fundamental importance to work in micro-teams, doctors with study staff and nursing staff”.

To “dedicate himself more to prevention activities, the general practitioner – highlights the expert – needs to work in a group, to have office staff who can support him in organizing vaccination campaigns and, above all, who can support him regarding the active calling of patients. This already happens in Umbria, most general practitioners work in micro-teams and therefore with our practice and nursing staff we can aim for a truly broad vaccination of our patients”.

The novelty of the Pnpv 2023-2025, he comments, “does not only concern the active call based on the ‘age’ of the patient, but above all the active call based on ‘risk’, the absolute task of us family doctors because knowing the patient is our prerogative We have a 360° view of the patient, we know his clinical picture, the therapies he follows and his family history of pathologies.”