ARAD. Refusal of vaccination childrena problem with an international character, imported together with pseudoscience and with the pseudospecialists who build, especially in social media, anti-vaccination campaigns, is beginning to be seen more and more clearly in the annual statistics and in our country.
According to data centralized by the Arad Public Health Directorate, the vaccination coverage of children enrolled in the national vaccination program is decreasing from year to year.
In the month of February of the year 2022, the group born in July 2020 was evaluated (vaccination at 18 months)respectively 273 children from Arad countyof which 94 children were found to be unvaccinated according to their age, the main reasons for non-vaccination being non-presentation or contraindications temporary.
The highest vaccination coverage is recorded when it comes to the BCG vaccine, against tuberculosis. In 2022, 97.37% of eligible urban children were vaccinated, while in 2021 the percentage was 98.70%. In rural areas, 95.87 percent were vaccinated in 2022 and 95.41 percent in 2021.
By far the biggest drop is when it comes to vaccination with the MMR vaccine, which is given to prevent measles, mumps and rubella. If in 2021, 96.77% of eligible children were vaccinated in urban areas, in 2022 the percentage dropped to 65.97%. The percentage is also decreasing in rural areas – 78.28% of children were vaccinated in 2021, while in 2022, the percentage was only 71.08%.
One of the diseases almost completely eradicated thanks to the vaccine is poliomyelitis, a disease that has extremely serious effects. However, there are parents who choose not to vaccinate their children against this disease. In Arad county, in 2021, just over 78% of children were vaccinated with this vaccine in the urban environment, and in 2022, the percentage dropped to 70.4%.
In this age category, cases of non-vaccination occurred in 44 situations as a result of parents’ refusal.
Vaccination at 12 months
In August, the batch of those born in July 2021, namely 244 children, was checked. Among the latter, 83 children were found not vaccinated according to their agei. Of these, 72 did not get vaccinated due to the parent’s refusal.
There are also cases in which the children are born abroad, but appear in the Romanian records. In some situations, the children have been vaccinated, but if the parents do not come with a vaccination card, they appear in the statistics as unvaccinated. There were also 30 situations in the urban environment where children were not vaccinated due to lack of vaccine, and another 15 situations were recorded in the rural environment.
Medical contraindication
There are also cases in which the vaccination could not be carried out on time due to medical contraindications, most often because the child had a cold. Normally, however, after the child is cured the parent should notify the family doctor and make the appointment to start the vaccination schedule. But this does not happen all the time. There are also family doctors who closely follow the vaccination process among patients on the lists and contact the family to reschedule appointments, but not in all cases there is time or availability.
Alarm
Mihaela Câtu, epidemiologist at the Arad Public Health Directorate, says that the evolution of the numbers is starting to become worrying:
„Dacif we look at vaccination coverage, it deteriorates from year to year, although vaccination is free. If we continue to decline at this rate, we will be dealing, in a few years, with the re-emergence of those rare diseases that have been eradicated by vaccination, such as polio, which is crippling, or diphtheria. Let’s not forget the measles epidemic we faced in 2017, which would not have happened if the vaccination schedule had been followed.”
