Vaccinations have greatly improved public health. Diseases that have caused countless victims worldwide every year are now almost or completely eliminated. Thanks to vaccines.
And even now, in the corona pandemic, the world has placed hope in vaccinations as a way out of the crisis.
It is the message of the book Vaxx – How Vaccinations Have Made Our World Better, in which medical microbiologist and epidemiologist Roel Coutinho outlines the history of vaccinations against serious infectious diseases. The book is also Coutinho’s answer to the anti-tax movement with which he was introduced as director of the Center for Infectious Disease Control at RIVM.
HPV vaccination
That acquaintance was in 2008, when the vaccine against the HPV virus that can cause cervical cancer entered the National Immunization Program (RVP). The information about the HPV shot was classic: with leaflets, advertisements and commercials.
The internet was ignored. But it was precisely there that the target group of young girls met and fables were spread about the alleged harmful effects of the vaccine. And media, according to Coutinho, gave a lot of space to people who called the vaccines poisons without any evidence.
An article in the Dutch Journal of Medicine, in which some cancer epidemiologists opposed the rapid introduction of the HPV vaccination, did not help either. Only 50 percent of the girls invited came to get the HPV vaccination that first time.
Wrongly addressed
At the time, Roel Coutinho acknowledged to the NOS that the campaign for the HPV vaccination had failed. Since then, RIVM has been actively involved in internet discussions.
In a so-called Cochrane-review evaluating all available studies, the HPV vaccines have again been shown to protect young women from precancerous cervical cancer. There are no indications that they are not safe.
During a debate about the Mexican flu in Amsterdam at the beginning of 2011, Coutinho again had to deal with antivaxers. He needed protection to avoid being hit. Eventually he had to leave through the back door.
Huge contribution
Whatever anti-taxers claim, vaccinations have greatly improved the health of the world’s population, Coutinho points out in his book. Polio (childhood paralysis), for example, has been virtually eliminated worldwide.
The polio virus causes an intestinal infection that babies usually get. They were then still protected by antibodies that their mother had transferred. The number of polio cases decreased as a result of improvements in hygiene from around 1850.
If they did occur, it was at a later age, when the mother’s antibodies had worn off. As a result, infections became more serious and regularly caused (childhood) paralysis.
Fundamentalist Believers
In the early 1950s there was a vaccine against polio that was offered in the Netherlands from 1957. After that, polio outbreaks only occurred among experimental Reformers: in 1971 in Staphorst and in 1977 in Elspeet and Uddel.
The latest outbreak spread throughout the Bible Belt, affecting an estimated 20,000 people. 110 became seriously ill and 80 became paralyzed.
Also in areas where the Taliban or similar fundamentalist Muslim groups are in charge, polio has not yet disappeared. These groups prevent the inoculation of the population for religious reasons and by force.
BMR-prik
Another success that Coutinho mentions – in addition to vaccinations against diphtheria and tetanus, for example – is the MMR vaccination against mumps, measles and rubella. In mumps, meningitis is the most serious complication. In men, the testes can become infected, which can lead to anomalies of the sperm. There is insufficient evidence that mumps can render men sterile.
Rubella is especially dangerous for pregnant women. The most famous example of this was Princess Christina. She was born with an eye defect because her mother Juliana became infected with rubella during pregnancy.
With measles, (serious) complications such as inflammation of the middle ear, pneumonia and meningitis can occur. The vaccines against mumps, measles and rubella have been around for about sixty years and have been part of the national vaccination program since the second half of the seventies.
Since then, these diseases in the Netherlands only occur in groups that reject vaccinations. The three vaccines have been given in combination since 1987, the MMR shot.
Crook
The vaccination rate for measles, which is extremely contagious, must be at least 95 percent to achieve herd immunity. By a 1998 publication by the English physician Wakefield in The Lancet vaccination coverage fell in many countries.
Wakefield linked the MMR vaccination with autism and intestinal complaints. But Wakefield turned out to be one crook, his article was withdrawn by The Lancet and he was dropped as a doctor.
Nowadays he is turning against corona vaccines from the United States. With little success, interest in the SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations appears to be high in most places.
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