The flu shot season begins in a tense atmosphere. Never before have anti-vaccination sentiments been so strong in Poland, the medical arguments in this discussion are accompanied by religious, environmental, and sometimes political motives.
Last autumn-winter season, only 3.7% of Poles were vaccinated against influenza. Every year this group decreases: four years ago it was 7% of the population, in the 2010/2011 season - 5.2%, and in 2011/2012 - 4.5%. Will this trend continue this year, and will Poland become a European outsider? Quite possible. Recently, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled that the sanitary services have no right in any way to punish parents who do not give their children routine vaccinations. The judges, however, stated that in this case the voivods were authorized to impose punishment, but they did not have the appropriate tools or personnel to carry out control measures. The anti-vaccine movement celebrates victory and calls on parents who previously had to pay fines tosubmit requests for termination of cases and refund (the amount of the fine fluctuated between 100-1000 zlotys (1000-10 thousand rubles - approx. transl.)). […]
Anti-vaccination rhetoric has become commonplace in other countries. In the United States, Barbara Loe Fisher, founder and leader of one of the most influential anti-vaccination organizations, quotes Orwell and the Bible in her speeches. "The fight we are waging with the government will determine the future not only of health but also of freedom for Americans," warns Fischer, who usually ends her fiery speeches with a statement posted above the entrance to the Washington Holocaust Memorial Museum - "The first to die.
In Poland, no one has turned to such associations so far, although in the popular TV program Krystyna Jaworowicz "Investigative Report", which touched on the topic of vaccinations this year, a lawyer invited to the studio calmly stated that “compulsory vaccination is x years ".
The anti-vaccine revolt unites, on the one hand, conservative traditionalists and, on the other, “advanced” ecology-oriented liberals who oppose globalization and environmental destruction. "My body was created by God, it heals itself and regulates its processes, no man can do it better than God" - this credo, which often sounds from the lips of religious fundamentalists, in fact, differs little from the "ecological" views of lovers of the so-called holistic and natural medicine, believing in the self-healing of the body without the support of any chemical or biological means.
If we talk about the medical arguments of opponents of vaccination, they are a lot of pseudo-scientific idle talk. For example, according to the famous traveler Wojciech Cejrowski, after vaccination, “the body is busy producing antibodies against unnecessary diseases, and when new infections appear, the immune system has only 15% of the free capacity to fight them, so vaccinated people get sick much more difficult. than those who have never been vaccinated."
To ridicule of this medical nonsense (after all, the immune system is arranged completely differently from the sewing studio), Tseirovsky explains that he takes data from American books, which gives him weight in the eyes of his supporters, but has no scientific value.
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Fear and Reason
The debate around the meaning of vaccination is not just an environmental or religious debate, as is the case with GMOs or in vitro fertilization. It is also a reaction to the mistakes of the pharmaceutical business and drug marketing failures that have recently undermined the credibility of experts. The sharp drop in the number of flu shots comes after a bitter dispute over the purchase of a vaccine against the so-called swine flu in the 2009/2010 season. And while Health Minister Ewa Kopacz, then at the forefront of the pandemic front, emerged victorious from the opposition by refusing to buy a large batch of vaccine, all the hype did not promote this form of prevention.
"Anti-vaccine" usually make the same arguments. First, why get vaccinated against a virus that was last year (the World Health Organization, based on data from the previous influenza season, determines the most likely type of virus that is multiplied, killed and placed in new vaccines)? Secondly, if this form of prevention were effective, vaccinated people would not be infected with these infections. And, thirdly, is there not a conspiracy of pharmaceutical companies and employers behind all this, who just want to cash in on us and force us to work, although there is nothing wrong with getting the flu - just take a sick leave and lie in bed.
“It's hard to argue with such arguments at all,” says Paweł Grzesiowski, an employee of the Institute for the Prevention of Infectious Diseases Foundation. - The vaccine cannot cause influenza as it does not contain live viruses. However, it does not protect against other infections that can also cause coughs, runny nose, sinusitis."
Indeed, the flu shot does not protect 100%, and each of us may be in the group of several percent of people who will get infected anyway. But even if we turn out to be so unlucky, the disease will most likely go away more easily, and also will not threaten us with dangerous complications: pneumonia, heart damage, kidney failure. Influenza, contrary to popular belief, is not a simple cold, but a dangerous illness that can lead to death (last season, which turned out to be not the most intense, about 150 people died from complications after the flu in Poland). […]
Experts warn that refusal of prevention can soon lead to a sharp deterioration in the infectious situation. It's okay if this only concerned the flu and exclusively families that resist routine vaccinations of children (last year this figure was 4,200 people, and it may increase), but when the percentage of unvaccinated people in a particular area exceeds 10%, infections again begin to pose a threat … They are especially dangerous for those who, for medical reasons (for example, due to chronic or congenital immunological diseases), are contraindicated in vaccinations. Poliomyelitis or diphtheria was defeated due to the fact that mass vaccination covered almost 100% of the population. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for measles, whooping cough, mumps or rubella, which not everyone wants to be vaccinated against.as well as diseases such as pneumococcal pneumonia or rotavirus infection, which should have long been included in the vaccination schedule.
Advocates of "free choice" completely ignore the fact that vaccines protect not only the individual, but, above all, society, and that is why they become mandatory. Mandatory vaccinations and epidemiological control are designed to protect healthy people from infectious diseases. While in Poland the legislation is being softened, for example, in Australia it is being tightened. It recently announced that parents who refuse to vaccinate their children will be deprived of the benefit, which is a form of tax credit In Poland, such measures seem incredible against the background of how vaccine opponents manage to persuade the government that if every patient has the right to give or not consent to various medical manipulations,then it should be more important than the mention in the laws of the "compulsory" of certain vaccinations.
Concerned epidemiologists suggest a different solution: if in Poland nobody can be forced to get vaccinated, a provision could be introduced under which parents will be obliged to pay for the treatment of an unvaccinated child from measles or whooping cough. According to doctors, in this case, the decision to refuse vaccination would be made consciously, and the parents would understand that the responsibility for its consequences would lie solely with themselves. Of course, even such a hypothetical option is not ideal: an unvaccinated child can infect a classmate (who for some reason was not vaccinated in childhood) or elderly people with a weakened immune system. However, this method can at least reimburse the costs of treating those patients who themselves have condemned themselves to illness (and for whose decision now others have to pay).
Occult and economics
The rejection of scientific facts by anti-vaccinators undoubtedly has some kind of psychological basis. It’s hard not to understand the feelings of confused parents, whose children have autism, and whose doctors cannot explain why. Since numerous scientific studies are still looking for a clue to the mystery of this disease, pseudoscientists come to the resulting lacuna with their theories. It is very easy to draw a parallel between the emergence of autism and childhood vaccinations, which are given in the early years of life. The human mind is designed in such a way that it always prompts the simplest solutions: if two phenomena are observed simultaneously, they can / should be interconnected. 12 worldwide epidemiological studies have not found a link between vaccinations and autism, and 6 other large-scale studies have excluded the effect of thiomersal, a preservative, on the brain.which was added to vaccines (however, in the US it was abandoned in 2001, and in Poland in 2012). These facts did not calm the doubters. In their opinion, arguments about the safety of vaccines mean nothing, and they are waiting for scientific evidence that vaccines do not cause autism. The problem is that science doesn't work that way.
English physician Edward Jenner made the first smallpox vaccine in 1796. It took 100 years for humanity to understand why the method of stimulating natural immune mechanisms is effective. It took scientists even more time to isolate a specific virus that causes this disease.
The paradox is that thanks to vaccinations against dangerous diseases, we were able to get rid of the fear of epidemics. Since children were no longer at risk of dying from polio or smallpox, people began to take these diseases lightly and focus on what is only a fraction of a percent of the risk - side effects. Even among vaccine enthusiasts, no one would argue that for everyone and everyone, vaccination will do without undesirable consequences, but they are disproportionately less than the risk associated with refusing vaccinations. The chance of a child dying from whooping cough (due to pulmonary hypertension or other complications) is 1%. The risk of death from the triple vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis is practically zero (no studies have shown such an association).
Meanwhile, the Polish vaccination calendar is outdated. Since the price of budget-funded vaccines is of prime importance to the powers that be, and the Minister of Finance is cutting spending, including in the health department, we are starting to lag more and more behind other EU countries. Experts are convinced that funds should primarily be directed towards vaccinations against pneumococcal infection, which causes dangerous pneumonia in children and the elderly. According to Pavel Gzhesevsky, the universal vaccination of infants within two years would reduce the incidence of lung infections by 50%.
Polyvaccines, which provide protection against five or six infectious diseases at once, are more expensive than the usual ones, and therefore they are also not on the Polish calendar. Children who are vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, poliomyelitis and hemophilus influenzae receive three injections (in the left and right shoulder, as well as in the thigh), although one is enough, as is already practiced in almost all of Europe.
According to the official vaccination calendar, in the first two years of life, the child is given 16 injections, with the introduction of polyvaccines they could become 9. However, half of the parents do this themselves, and this is very beneficial to the Ministry of Health: citizens pay for what, in theory, they should be free … The vaccination schedule for the next year will be announced at the end of October. Will the changes be only cosmetic again?
The Krakow-based company HTA Audit, having analyzed the vaccination system in the EU countries, proposed a new solution to improve the population's access to vaccinations (which would require a radical redesign of the funding system). According to the authors of the report, recommended vaccines (which are not included in the calendar) could be included in the list of drugs for which patients pay a fraction of the price - 30 or 50%. The only question is, where will the National Health Fund find funds for this? So it would be worthwhile to analyze what savings the health care system brings from prevention.