Friday, 29 March, 2024
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Germany looks at fining parents not vaccinating children

Parents in Germany who fail to seek medical advice on vaccinating their children could face fines of up to €2,500, reports BBC News. Health Minister Hermann Gröhe said it was necessary to tighten the law because of a measles epidemic.

The government wants kindergartens to report any parents who cannot prove they have had a medical consultation. However, Germany is not yet making it an offence to refuse vaccinations – unlike Italy. Gröhe is quoted in the report as saying: "Continuing deaths from measles cannot leave anyone indifferent." A mother of three died of measles in the city of Essen last week.

Under the plan, the children of parents who fail to seek vaccination advice could be expelled from their day-care centre. The law is expected to be adopted next month. However, the report says the upper house of the German parliament, the Bundesrat, said forcing kindergartens to report some parents to the health authorities might breach data protection laws.

By mid-April this year Germany had 410 measles cases, compared with 325 for the whole of 2016, the Robert Koch Institute reported. The institute said that besides children, all adults born since 1970 should get immunised against measles, if they had not had the measles jab or had had it only once.

The report says Italian officials have attacked what they call "anti-scientific" theories which have led to vaccination rates falling well below levels deemed safe to prevent outbreaks. Those theories include a long discredited link between autism and the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine.

The report says a 2010 survey of vaccinations EU-wide and in Iceland and Norway found much variation in policy. The Venice project survey reported that 15 countries had no mandatory vaccinations, and the rest had at least one mandatory vaccination.
The level of compliance was high, including in countries where vaccinations were recommended, not mandatory.

The report concluded that "the label 'mandatory' is not the only driver behind achieving a high vaccination coverage, and many other factors can play a role, such as the use of combined vaccines, prices for the recipient, kind of offer, information and promotional campaigns".

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that since the introduction of two doses of anti-measles vaccine across Europe the number of cases has dropped sharply. The total in 2016 – about 5,000 – was the lowest ever recorded. But, the report says, 14 European countries are described as "endemic" for measles, and most cases this year were reported in seven of them: France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Switzerland and Ukraine. The largest outbreaks are in Italy and Romania, the WHO says.

The second measles jab needs to be administered to at least 95% of the population, the WHO says – a level not reached in the endemic countries. Children should be screened for their measles vaccination history when they start school, and those lacking evidence of receipt of two doses should be vaccinated, the WHO says.

[link url="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40056680"]BBC News report[/link]

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