After months of violent debates – and measles outbreaks – a new law banning unvaccinated children from Italian classrooms has come into force.
Under “Lorenzin's law,” parents had until March 10, 2019, to provide documentation showing that their child had been vaccinated against various diseases, as reported by RAI News, Italy's national public broadcaster.
If a child under 6 years of age has not been vaccinated, they will not be able to attend kindergartens or schools. If they are between 7 and 16 years old, the parents will have to pay a fine.
Mandatory vaccines include chickenpox, polio, mumps, rubella and – perhaps most crucially at this point – measles.
“No vaccine, no school,” Italian Health Minister Giulia Grillo told La Repubblica. “So far, everyone has had time to catch up.”
The city of Bologna has at least 300 children who currently do not meet vaccination requirements and are at risk of being suspended from school. In the Campania region, it is estimated that 700 children remain without vaccinations. It's unclear how many children will face school suspensions across the country.
Sui vaccini io e il governo non faremo passi indietro.In questi mesi abbiamo smontato tutti gli attacchi arrivati dai…
Posted by Giulia Grillo on Monday, March 11, 2019
The law
The law was first introduced in 2017 by former Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin in response to a measles outbreak that hit Italy.
The populist coalition government, led by the “anti-system” Five Star Movement and the far-right League party, threatened to overturn the law.
As early as 2015, the Five Star Movement gave a platform to discredited links between vaccination and autism. By 2017, his ideas had taken root: immunization rates had dropped and, unsurprisingly, measles cases had soared. However, they later backtracked on their promise to withdraw the law.
The introduction of the “Lorenzin law” also coincides with a huge measles outbreak in Europe. In 2018, Europe recorded 82.596 measles cases, three times more than in 2017, and 15 times more than in 2016.
Italy is not the first country to introduce mandatory immunizations. Australia introduced it in 2017 and has seen phenomenal success.
On March 10, the Italian Ministry of Health announced that vaccination coverage of children in Italy was on the rise. National coverage for children born in 2015 was 95,46 percent, above the minimum threshold of 95 percent recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).
At this 95 percent threshold, “herd immunity” means that the population is vaccinated enough to prevent any significant spread of the disease, thus protecting people who cannot be vaccinated, such as those with a weakened immune system.
“All children have the right to go to class, but I am sure parents will understand that everyone's health is the highest good, as well as a constitutional right,” Grillo said in a statement posted on Facebook.
We have a duty to do everything we can to guarantee it in a universal way, especially for children [who are] immunosuppressed.”
By IFLS
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