Parties’ vaccination plan would put kids’ lives at risk, say critics
ITALY: Two populist parties have promised to scrap mandatory vaccines for measles if they win Italy’s general election in March, drawing accusations of pandering to conspiracy theorists and putting lives at risk.
The anti-migrant Northern League has promised to repeal a law passed last August which compels parents to vaccinate their children against six illnesses, including measles.
The Northern League is part of the right-wing coalition with Silvio Berlusconi that pollsters expect to win the March 4 election.
The anti-establishment Five Star Movement, Italy’s most popular party on about 28 per cent support, has followed suit, opposing the six mandatory jabs. The other five are whooping cough, rubella, mumps, chickenpox and haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib).
‘‘We are in favour of persuasion,’’ said Luigi Di Maio, Five Star’s candidate for prime minister.
The law was rushed on to the statute books during an epidemic of 5000 cases of measles which claimed four lives last year. The outbreak was triggered by a sharp drop in the number of vaccinations, following publication of theories linking the jab to autism.
‘‘The league is gambling for a few extra votes against the health of Italians and of our children,’’ said Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin. ‘‘Italy needs a vaccination against incompetence.’’
Di Maio said he would leave in place four vaccinations – diphtheria, tetanus, hepatitis B and polio – which were already mandatory before last year’s law, but make the other six optional.
He said that if vaccination rates for the six dropped to dangerous levels, he would make them obligatory – prompting critics to point out that they were already at dangerous levels.
In 2016 the takeup of measles vaccinations in Italy fell to 87.26 per cent from 90 per cent in 2013, well below the 95 per cent safety limit recommended by the World Health Organisation. At the time, Five Star politicians were theorising about the dangers of vaccines, and a paper by a British doctor, Andrew Wakefield, linking the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism, was going viral. That paper has since been discredited.
Wakefield was struck off the British medical register after he ‘‘dishonestly and irresponsibly’’ claimed there was a link between the MMR vaccine and autism and bowel disease in children.
The Italian law change had led to the vaccination of 30 per cent of the children born between 2011 and 2015 who had not been vaccinated, officials told in December.
Matteo Renzi, the former prime minister whose government passed the law, said: ‘‘The health of our children is in the balance here, not a handful of votes.’’ Paolo Gentiloni, who succeeded Renzi, blamed the fall in vaccinations on a ‘‘spread of anti-scientific theories’’.