“Everywhere in the world, vaccination campaigns are increasingly faced with people delaying or refusing them for themselves or their child. This is generally what the experts of the World Health Organization have deplored (WHO) invited by the scientific journal Vaccinated on this subject.
Doubts about the usefulness, effectiveness and dangerousness of vaccines are expressed by more and more people in the world, all social categories combined.
Thus, each year in the world, 1.5 million children die from diseases that existing vaccines could have prevented. And one in five children does not routinely receive the life-saving vaccines they need. Evidenced by the death of a spanish child with diphtheria and not vaccinated last June.
“Vaccination hesitancy is the act of delaying or refusing safe vaccination despite its availability,” explain WHO experts. “Several factors come into play, including misinformation, complacency, convenience and trust. In Western countries in particular, this behavior of mistrust with regard to vaccines is partly linked to their supposed harmfulness, according to which certain vaccines would cause serious illnesses (hepatitis, multiple sclerosis or even autism). For others, it is negative beliefs that create anti-vaccine sentiment, such as the belief that vaccinating women leads to infertility. Finally, in some countries and particularly in the most disadvantaged countries, distrust of health professionals is a major obstacle to the vaccination of children. Not to mention the fear of needles.
“Vaccines can only improve health and prevent deaths,” recalls Dr. Philippe Duclos, Senior Adviser in the Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biological Products at WHO. The Organization therefore issues a whole series of recommendations intended for the health authorities of the countries and for the organizations which set up the calendars and the vaccination campaigns. “Effective communication is essential to dispel fears, address concerns and promote acceptance of vaccination”, conclude the experts, while knowing that “there is no miracle recipe”.
In France, the Minister of Health Marisol Touraine announced the establishment of a national debate in the fall, to calm the growing fears around vaccination, in particular linked to a shortage abnormally long.
Read also :
Vaccination: a national debate planned for the fall
A case of diphtheria in a small Spaniard revives the debate on vaccination
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Vaccines: how do they act in our body?
