We must say with full responsibility that today we do not know which child is vaccinated against which unless we look at the paper documents – said Chief Sanitary Inspector Paweł Grzesiowski on TVN24. He assessed that the Supreme Audit Office's report on mandatory vaccinations of children and adolescents shows the weakness of supervision and treats it as a starting point for systemic changes.
In Poland, vaccinations are obligatory due to age, according to Central Statistical Office datacovers approximately 7.5 million children and adolescents. In recent years, the number of vaccine refusals has increased from approximately 40,000 in 2018 to over 87,000 in 2023. Supreme Audit Office indicates that a further increase in vaccination refusals may lead to the outbreak of an epidemic of life-threatening diseases.
For the first time, Supreme Audit Office inspectors checked how relevant institutions carried out vaccinations and what their reaction was when parents evaded the obligation to vaccinate their children. They carried out an inspection at the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate, ten district sanitary and epidemiological stations (PSSE) and twenty primary health care facilities (POZ) from the following voivodeships: Łódź, Opole, Podkarpackie, Pomerania and Warmia-Masuria. The Supreme Audit Office's audit covered the years 2021-2023, and the results of the report were published on Thursday. Vice-President of the Supreme Audit Office, Piotr Miklis, assessed that the system did not work and required significant corrections.
During the audit, the Supreme Audit Office revealed cases where primary health care facilities did not send reports to the district sanitary and epidemiological stations, and the latter did not enforce this obligation. Moreover, the Sanitary and Epidemiological Station and the Primary Health Care Center inconsistently reported data on people avoiding vaccinations – sometimes showing children, sometimes parents or both groups. NIK auditors also found that district sanitary and epidemiological stations, despite the lack of legal basis, independently corrected primary health care reports, often without consulting the interested institutions. As a result, reports prepared by district stations did not provide a reliable picture of the vaccination status of the population in Poland. Nevertheless, in the opinion of GIS, they were the only and reliable source of knowledge on this subject.
The auditors also found that primary health care facilities did not have accurate data on the number of people who should be vaccinated, how many people were vaccinated, or the number of refusals.
Grzesiowski: I treat the Supreme Audit Office's report as a starting point for systemic changes
The case was commented on on Friday in “WSTAsz i pozna” on TVN24 by Chief Sanitary Inspector Paweł Grzesiowski.
– The report primarily shows the weakness of supervision and this is the most important information for me, because today I am responsible for the sanitary inspection – he said.
He noted that the report covers the years 2021-2023, i.e. “the most difficult period in a hundred years, because the pandemic meant that the sanitary inspection was actually 150 percent redirected to Covid problems.” – This does not exempt us from thinking that paper documentation, inaccuracy in counting these children, and above all, the lack of a definition of a person who refuses vaccinations – these are problems that existed before the pandemic and we still have them today – he added.
Grzesiowski said that he treated the Supreme Audit Office's report as “a starting point for systemic changes when it comes to mandatory vaccinations.”
He noted, however, that “in Poland, many children are still vaccinated.” – Let us remember that in most voivodeships the percentage of vaccinated children exceeds 90 percent – he added.
“Digitalization is a priority”
He pointed out that “we have a change in the law that came into force this year, where we no longer count parents who avoid vaccinations, but we are supposed to have a list of children who did not receive the vaccine on time.” – And we are preparing such a report for 2024, the first one in the history of Poland, because there has been no such report before – he added.
– But of course, digitization is an absolute priority, because you can't count children based on a piece of paper, which, moreover, has a tendency to get lost – he emphasized.
As he said, “in order to be able to create an electronic vaccination card and transfer all elements related to maintaining the vaccination calendar to the digital system on the P1 platform, we need an amendment to the act.”
– The Minister of Health knows that such a change is very desirable. As far as I know, work in the ministry, because it is the ministry that is the applicant for this change in the act, is already underway and everyone sees the need for digitalization. This is the first point, he said.
– Of course, this statutory regulation is followed by further changes, i.e. doctor's offices, all vaccination points must also have electronic documentation, i.e. they must change the format in their office applications to enter this data. And then our work begins, i.e. extracting this data and checking which child should or did not receive which vaccine, and thus creating another application. It simply has to be software that will catch children who are not vaccinated on time. Only then will an actual database (of people) vaccinated in Poland be created – he explained.
– Today, it must be said with full responsibility: we do not know which child is vaccinated against which unless we look at these paper documents – added Grzesiowski.
Grzesiowski: if we lose immunity, diseases will come back
Grzesiowski also said that “there are not many declared anti-vaxxers in Poland.” – It's maybe one, maybe two percent. All the rest are people who have just read various nonsense and then come to me with concerns: “Can the doctor guarantee me that my child will survive vaccinations, that he will be healthy after vaccinations, because I have heard, I have heard thousands of different things.” And this is what we need to talk about, the safety of vaccinations, he emphasized.
The head of GIS said that “if social and population immunity decreases, diseases will return, we will have compensatory epidemics of diseases that no longer existed in Poland.” – For example, polio, hepatitis B. All these pathogens circulate in the environment, but we, being immune, do not get sick. If we lose this immunity, the diseases will come back, he added.
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