Low Vaccination Rates Spark Concern Among Dutch Doctors and Patient Groups

Doctors and patient groups are raising the alarm about the low level of vaccination in the Netherlands. With the initiative under the Standard they want to inform health care providers about their role in this. They also want to provide information to people who are unsure about vaccination.

The initiative comes from the Dutch Influenza Foundation. Chairman and former GP Ted van Essen is very concerned about the lower vaccination rate. He believes that the right information helps health care providers to answer questions from parents and patients.

“It turns out it’s badly needed,” says Van Essen News NOS Radio 1. “Much attention has been given to the cases of whooping cough which lead to… infant mortality directed and the the measles go around again. People have questions and would like to ask them, for example, the family doctor or nurse.” According to Van Essen, there is a lot of room for improvement and healthcare providers should answer these questions more often.

In addition, he sees that it is not only the number of children receiving the vaccine that is decreasing. “The vaccination rate has also become much lower among adults. At the beginning of this century it was still 75 percent, and it is now at 57 percent,” said the former family doctor. He has been tracking the flu vaccine since the 1990s.

“You have to vaccinate throughout your life, especially people with less resistance, but also elderly people with lung or heart disease. The vaccination rate is also far too low there.”

The European Health Service (ECDC) also sees the number of measles infections increasing rapidly in European countries. The ECDC says it is alarming that there are outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases.

There are 64 cases of measles in the Netherlands, mainly among migrant workers in and around Eindhoven. The number of whooping cough cases is also increasing in Europe. According to the ECDC, there will be more than ten times more infections in 2023 and 2024 than in 2021 and 2022.

Before that, pediatricians in the Netherlands jointly appealed to parents to vaccinate their child against all diseases in the National Immunization Program. They did this after four babies died from whooping cough.

“We have not seen such a high number in the Netherlands since the whooping cough vaccine was introduced into the National Vaccination Program in 1957,” the doctors wrote at the time.

Van Essen: “It is a matter of great concern to me that childhood vaccination has fallen so far. In my entire life as a family doctor, I have seen it once in a child who was two months old. And a – now four children have died. It is terrible that this can still happen in the Netherlands.”

Measles, whooping cough, all the diseases you suddenly hear about again. You can hear how life-threatening diseases can recur in this video from NOS op 3: