“Doctors and all health professionals must absolutely vaccinate themselves, especially against Covid. It is not only a problem of compliance with ethical constraints, but also a matter of principle. If doctors, nurses and all those who work in hospitals put in place doubt the vaccine end up generating doubts in the population. But failure to vaccinate above all causes safety problems. An unvaccinated doctor endangers not only his life, but also that of his patients “. Michele Quarto is retired after having led the Polyclinic Hygiene Operating Unit for years, what can be defined as the regional watchtower on the spread of viruses. Covid included. Also due to his professional career, Professor Quarto, at the forefront of health emergencies that exploded over the years in Puglia, from cholera to hepatitis, passing through A-H1N1 to SARS, just can’t understand the fact that some of his medical colleagues, but also nurses and technicians, we are refusing to get vaccinated against Covid. A case that would not seem limited to a few units of personnel, according to what the regional councilor PD Fabiano Amati denounces, who estimates 30 percent of unvaccinated health workers in Brindisi. Hence the decision of the Region to launch a circular to prevent unvaccinated staff from continuing to work in departments at risk of Covid. All this while waiting for the law introducing the obligation of anti-Covid vaccination for health professionals to arrive in the classroom of the regional council.
Professor, some of your colleagues don’t want to get vaccinated. What do you think?
“This story sends me into a rage. It is against ethics and beyond all it is foolish. These doctors put at risk not only their health, but also that of their clients. And if we want to put it on an emotional level, they also put at risk. their relatives because they bring the infection home.
So it is absurd that there are health workers who think like deniers. Their doubts about the anti-Covid vaccines are incomprehensible “.
Let’s clear the field of these doubts.
“There is nothing scientific in those who feed doubts about vaccines, we start from preconceptions. Who today is a denier and has some reservations about the anti-Covid vaccine has always been skeptical about all vaccines, even those that are made in childhood such as measles, mumps and rubella vaccines “.
The doubts apparently are fueled by the new technology used in the making of some anti-Covid vaccines, namely the messenger RNA technique.
“This lack of experimentation is a story that deniers always pull out. I remember the same criticisms against the experimental vaccine used when we had the emergency caused by the H1N1 flu, which we called” swine “. In the case of Covid, vaccines are of new formulation, in fact, and the testing and approval times have been reduced to allow them to be used as quickly as possible. But the EMA and Aifa, the regulatory bodies, have approved these vaccines and I do not think they are guided by On the other hand, in Phase 1 of the trial, the safety dynamics of vaccines occur. They are drugs like the others, but which in this moment represents the only weapon we have at our disposal to counter this global disaster “.
The Region has sent a circular to the ASL to provide for the temporary transfer of personnel who do not want to get vaccinated. Is it a solution?
“The Region can also send the circulars, but in reality the matter is in the hands of the occupational doctors. They are the ones who, in the event that there are occupational risks in the workplace, can provide a judgment of unfitness and ask the competent company to authorize the transfer of those who do not get vaccinated. Look, this is also a problem of image “.
What do you mean?
“If the health worker is the first not to want to get vaccinated, he ends up creating confusion and doubts in the population. And this also goes against professional ethics. I add that here in Puglia the law presented by the regional councilor Fabiano Amati is about to be approved. now he wants to include the obligation also on anti-Covid vaccination “.
Councilor Amati is now asking to call the regional council as soon as possible to approve that law.
“I agree. If a doctor or a nurse does not vaccinate and perform activities in situations of risk not only for himself but also for patients, this operator must necessarily be shifted from one job to another: we don’t have to worry about this. However, I would like to say that I am against coercion, I aim for consensus interventions. We must overcome the prejudices of health professionals and make them understand that they have not been forced to do this job, they have chosen it. Consequently they are required to respect the ethical constraints and therefore to vaccinate. We have only one real great weapon to leave the nightmare of the pandemic behind and return to live a normal life. We cannot allow unscientific prejudices, I would say medieval, to weaken this weapon, putting the lives of people”.
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