This Friday, January 5, 2018, Agnès Buzyn (Minister of Solidarity and Health) and Dr. Daniel Lévy-Bruhl (epidemiologist at the Institut National de Veille Sanitaire, INVS) gave a conference to defend the government’s vaccination policy.
Indeed, since January 1, 2018, children born after December 31, 2017 must be vaccinated against 11 diseases via 4 injections – a measure strongly contested by part of the general public.
“January 1, 2018 is a major step in strengthening prevention,” first announced Agnès Buzyn, who recalled the importance of fighting on a daily basis against the dissemination of false information about vaccination. “Against the conspiracy theory, there is unfortunately no vaccine,” she lamented.
“No conspiracy theory vaccine”
The specialists then took the example of measles, a childhood disease which caused 20 deaths “in the late 2000s”: “deaths that would normally have been avoided thanks to herd immunity asked Dr. Daniel Lévy-Bruhl. Before recalling that in France, currently, the vaccination coverage against measles is 91% for the first injection and 79% for the second – which is insufficient.
Second example: meningococcal C meningitis, which has caused 200 deaths since 2011 in France. At present, vaccination coverage in the national territory is “only” 71%: “in the Netherlands, vaccination coverage against meningococcal C has reached 94%, and the disease has now disappeared” .
“When we take the decision to misinform public opinion, when we circulate false information and when families hesitate and do not have children vaccinated, and when these families lose a child from meningitis, today they cannot not turn against these “distillers” of bad information” concluded Agnès Buzyn.
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