Immunization rates in Italy are decreasing at a worrying trend: international targets for measles eradication and safety thresholds in childhood vaccination are vanishing. Authorities, doctors and families are concerned that a coverage below 86% for MPR (measles, parotitis and rubella) vaccine can impair herd immunity, putting younger babies, immunocompromised people and not-responders at risk.
A very recent and innovative example of good practice concerning awareness campaigns is the “Italian Chart for the Promotion of Vaccinations”, a recent call for action whose website is: http://www.teamvaxitalia.it/. Namely, the Chart is the result of the efforts of the “TeamVaxItaly” movement that had been founded in a civil society meeting in Fano (Italy) in October 2015.
Parents, healthcare workers, bloggers and science communicators have launched a positive experience in Italy, with the aim of sharing and promoting scientific information towards an important public health goal: to face the drop in vaccine coverage.
Susanna Esposito, professor of Paediatrics at the University of Milan, Italy and president of WAIDID (World Association for Infectious Diseases), thinks that families need more information about safety and efficacy of vaccines, in order to overcome their growing hesitancy towards them.
Until the end, it seemed it could sort out to be a happy-ending story, a demonstration of how new social networks, renown for spreading misinformation, can also correct it, when used properly. But the unfortunately predictable finale showed the opposite: counteracting false ideas about vaccines is not that easy. It will take time, a big deal of patience, communication skills and a good, coordinated strategy as well.
High rates of vaccination coverage in childhood are main indicators for public health. However, reaching and maintaining such a target is not always an easy task for public health institutions, and the spread of vaccine refusal and hesitancy is making this even harder. Enforcing mandatory vaccinations is one of the strategies that some countries adopted and others are considering in order to face
The recent case of the French parents who risked a jail sentence for refusing to vaccinate their children reignited the intense debate over mandatory vaccinations, whose efficacy as an instrument to maintain high level of vaccine coverage has been questioned.
Rhett Krawit is a Californian 7-year-old kid. He survived leukaemia after a fight lasted three-and-half years that left his immune system highly compromised. He wants to go to school and he has any right to do so, but he cannot do it safely. Rhett cannot be vaccinated because his immune system is still rebuilding and the presence of unvaccinated children exposes him to diseases like measles and chicken pox, which could be lethal for him. An actual risk, since in almost one fourth of Californian schools the herd immunity has been lost because of vaccine hesitancy and refusal.
This fall, the publishing, by the Italian Minister of Health, of the alarming data showing the drop in vaccine coverage in the country, revived the ardent debate between opponents and supporters of vaccinations, especially online. Adding fuel to the fire was the death of a one-month old child by whooping cough at Sant’Orsola hospital, in Bologna, even if it is still unclear if such a tragedy actually had a significant link with the decrease of vaccine coverage or was just a coincidence.
