Editorial: Vaccines

The Council oF State, Greece’s supreme administrative court, ruled that it is legal to expel from daycare centres and kindergartens children whose parents refuse to vaccinate them because that is in line with the constitutional provision that the state must tend to tend to public health.

That was the right decision because it is necessary to vaccinate children.

This is not only because, as the court said: “It would violate the principle of equality to accept a person’s demand not to be vaccinated because [he or she] is not in danger due to the fact that they live in a safe environment because the other people there have been vaccinated”.

It is also because the experience of dealing with COVID-19 has taught us how dangerous the anti-vaccines movement can be.

Of course, we should have learned our lesson much earlier. In 2019, due to the global increase in the number of measles cases in 2018, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that the anti-vaccination movement is an “international public health threat”

Everyone thought that measles was a thing of the past because humanity had managed to eradicate it by vaccinating children. But two years ago there was a 30 percent hike in cases globally because many parents decided to play the role of paediatrician and to make decisions without the requisite knowledge.

Doctors maintain that vaccines are the greatest public health achievement after ensuring that water is drinkable.

Science was able to eradicate thanks to the vaccination of children deadly diseases that once killed off millions of people, millions of children.

The fact that we are today confronted with an unprecedented public health crisis presents us with an opportunity to accept anew the steps of progress that we had managed to make.

We owe it both to our children and to all those children with whom they come in contact.