The situation is truly paradoxical. On the one hand, the Constitutional Council has just ruled that the compulsory vaccination of children for the three vaccines diphtheria, tetanus and polio was “in conformity with the constitutional requirement of health protection”, on the other, parents cannot more find these vaccines in pharmacies. A shortage that has lasted for several months and which is mainly due to the commercial policy of pharmaceutical companies, which prefer to manufacture a combined vaccine against 6 diseases (diphtheria, tetanus, polio, whooping cough, hemophillus influenzae B, hepatitis B) rather than the combined vaccine DTP (diphtheria, tetanus, polio). Ditto for the pertussis vaccine, also not found, while the disease is back. But it is precisely because of this resurgence of whooping cough that the shortage of vaccines has set in, since it was necessary to feed countries like Great Britain and the United States to face the epidemic.
However, health officials believe there is no cause for concern. “We have always had shortages in vaccines” explained on theRTL antenna Dr Odile Launay, vice-president of the Technical Committee on Vaccinations (CTV). “It regularly happens that manufacturers have difficulty providing the sufficient number of doses, especially since the demand at the international level is more and more important”, she added before recalling that the vaccine which is currently recommended in France for infants, is the so-called hexavalent formula, that is to say protecting against 6 diseases. A formula which is available in pharmacies.
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