Navigating Permanent Health Damages After a Corona Vaccination: Benefits, Processes and Support

Anyone with permanent damage to their health after a vaccination is entitled to benefits, ie financial support. You have to submit an application to the State Office for Social Affairs, Youth and Supply (LSJV). The applications are processed with the clarification of the medical facts first by the administration of the State Office for Social Affairs, Youth and Care (LSJV). This means that she requests findings and treatment reports as well as vaccination certificates and asks questions the Paul Ehrlich Institute and the health authorities. When examining whether the person concerned is entitled to financial support, i.e. whether vaccination damage is recognized, the state office relies on medical experts. The decision is then issued by the administration of the LSJV.

The medical evaluation is carried out by the LSJV’s attending physicians, who assess the causal connection between the alleged health disorder and the vaccination. In individual cases, external examinations can also be commissioned from experts (e.g. from university hospitals), which are included in the assessment.

Die Independent patient advice Germany, UPD, points out that according to the professional regulations, medical experts are obliged to “proceed with the necessary care and to express their medical conviction to the best of their knowledge” when issuing expert opinions. (§ 25 MBO-Ä) Doctors are also obliged to maintain their medical independence in professional relationships with third parties. (§ 30 MBO-Ä). It can therefore be assumed that the experts who work for the pension offices are independent, the UPD announced. Otherwise you would violate your duties under the professional code.

According to the law, not every disease that occurs at the same time as a vaccination represents vaccination damage.

Only if the manifested causal damage to health lasts longer than six months is it recognized as a result of a vaccination according to Section 60 of the Infection Protection Act, IfSG. If the damage to health subsides within six months, the applicant is not entitled to benefits. A causal connection to the vaccination is considered given if a vaccination is proven, the vaccination reaction goes beyond the usual level and there is permanent damage to health.

All findings and treatment documents are obtained from the LSJV. The applicants do not have to obtain them themselves! However, those affected report that their vaccination damage was only recognized after they had obtained expert opinions themselves.

The medical practitioners in Rhineland-Palatinate refer to documentation and studies that e.g. B. from the Paul Ehrlich Institute have been published or refer to other studies from there. They are also in constant contact with the medical practitioners in the other federal states on this topic.

Die UPD does not want to comment on this in general. In general, however, the largest possible number of studies with as many participants as possible and the highest possible quality (double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, etc.) is desirable. On the subject of post-vac with Corona, this is not yet the case. The same applies to post- and long-Covid.

According to the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, safety studies on the vaccines against COVID-19 are still being carried out.

Health disorders that can be recognized as vaccine damage include myocarditis, pericarditis, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, venous thrombosis, cerebral venous thrombosis, idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, Guillain-Barré syndrome and transverse myelitis. According to official surveys, they occur rarely or very rarely. Exact figures are not available to the LSJV. The director of the Marburg University Hospital, Bernhard Schieffer, suspects that the number of unreported cases is significantly higher than the known cases in Germany.

He criticizes the failure to record all side effects from the start. “You could have set up a register for vaccinations, like there is in Great Britain or Sweden, for example. In Germany, no one thought about it.” As a result, side effects were not sufficiently documented.

As with any illness of a person, the respective health insurance company is the first point of contact.

The State Office is legally obliged to comprehensively examine and clarify the facts of the case. The attending physicians and clinics are also included. The medical documents are then evaluated together with medical experts. How quickly an application is processed also depends on how quickly the medical experts deliver.

Patient representatives are calling for more staff to be made available and processes to be speeded up.

Contact points for patients with suspected post-vac syndrome are the special outpatient clinic for post-vac cases University Hospital Marburg and the neurological post-Covid-19 consultation hours at the Department of Neurology, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin. In contrast to the Marburg outpatient clinic, however, post-vac patients in Berlin are only cared for if they have primarily neurological symptoms. If access to these post-vac special outpatient clinics is difficult, for example due to long waiting lists, the treating physicians can refer the patients to a special outpatient clinic for long-Covid due to the similarities to long/post-Covid syndrome.

The UPD calls for more research, more specialized contact points and outpatient clinics. “This also includes hotlines and the clarification and increase in the competence of doctors in family and specialist practices as well as clinics beyond specialized outpatient clinics,” said a UPD spokesman. “Only then can patients feel that they are being taken seriously and are being well cared for, both personally and professionally.”

The Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of Health has announced that five contact points for post-Covid patients will be set up in the state, i.e. people who suffer from the long-term consequences of Covid disease. But people who suffer from symptoms after a corona vaccination should also find help there. “The situation of those affected in Rhineland-Palatinate must be improved. Of course, the topics of chronic fatigue syndrome, ME/CFS and Post Vac “, said Ministerial Director Daniel Stich.