Prahova Newspaper: Diseases of the Past Threatening the Future
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The increasingly pronounced lack of interest of parents in immunizing children with vaccines from the national scheme will lead to the reappearance of possibly serious infectious diseases, draw the attention of doctors. Among them: diphtheria, whooping cough, polio, tuberculosis and more.Data from international reports on childhood vaccination continue to place Romania in the top European countries with low immunization rates. For the measles vaccine, for example, romania registered almost 80% of all measles cases in the EU, according to the Health at a Glance 2024 data of the OECD, cited by Hotnews.
Dr. Adrian Marinescu, primary physician of Infectious Diseases, manager of the “Prof. Dr. Matei Balș” National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Bucharest, advocates vaccination as a life-saving method and makes some important clarifications regarding the cases of Hansen’s disease (leprosy) identified in Cluj.
More and more parents seem to have put a barrier to vaccinating their children, opening the way to potentially fatal or disabling serious infectious diseases.
The ever-lower vaccination rates testify to this situation. Thus, in Romania, until the end of last month, the measles epidemic produced over 36,000 cases and 30 deaths, most of them in children, according to data from the National Institute of Public Health, INSP.
The MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccination average is below 70%, a worrying drop.
The report Health at a Glance: Europe 2024 of the OECD shows that Romania recorded 77.8% of all measles cases at EU level. And it is not the onyl example.
“First of all, it should be understood that vaccination – as a principle of prevention – is the best measure by which complications from infectious diseases are not reached. It does not lead to death. Practically, throughout history, since we talk about the vaccine, this is exactly what we started from: namely that vaccines save lives”, emphasizes Dr. Adrian Marinescu, primary physician of infectious diseases, manager of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases “Prof. Dr. Matei Balș” from Bucharest.
And we’re not just talking about the MMR vaccine, but also about the other vaccines that, unfortunately, we’ve gotten to do less and less, adds the specialist.
Apart from smallpox which is really eradicated, adds Marinescu, other diseases are not, and the fact that they are rare does not mean that they are completely absent. “And I think the best example is related to Hansen’s disease – that is, leprosy. this disease has also existed in recent years worldwide, it’s true, in endemic areas in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. What reached Europe