Europe turning against vaccines
“Europeans are turning away from vaccines, amid rising distrust of immunization for infectious diseases,” begins an article earlier this year in EurActiv, the journal of record for the European Community, published in over a dozen languages and widely read by journalists as a go-to-source for emerging policy debates in Europe.
As evidence for its claim, the article cites the French National Institute for Prevention and Health Education, which found that “distrust of vaccination has risen from 10% in 2005 to 40% in 2010,” as well as pointing to a major conference held in Italy last year, The State of Health of Vaccination in the EU. The conference, designed to counter the growing opposition among Europeans to vaccinations, featured numerous speakers concerned about the low levels of vaccination throughout the continent.
As a Swedish presenter at the conference remarked about the failure of the public to embrace the MMR vaccine to protect against measles, “Among children aged 1-4 years, the age group targeted by routine childhood vaccination programs, 77% of cases were unvaccinated.”
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