Doctors draw attention to the problem and warn about the consequences. The report of the Supreme Audit Office confirms their concerns. The number of children and adolescents subject to compulsory vaccinations has been significantly decreasing for several years. Administrative and educational activities are neglected.
Within five years, the number of unvaccinated children has more than doubled, and maybe even tripled, because the Supreme Audit Office report shows that the system does not have everything under control. This is the beginning of a debate to determine what to change and how to change it.
– Providing false addresses to which vaccination cards are sent, and those parents who do not want to be seen by the system and want to “disappear” their child from the system, can do it effectively – points out Dr. Paweł Grzesiowski, Chief Sanitary Inspector.
Children “disappear” and the system based – literally – on paper, favors manual data control, according to inspectors.
– Unreliable data reported by primary health care are then duplicated and aggregated by sanitary and epidemiological stations, and then presented in a report for the entire country – says Piotr Miklis, vice-president of the Supreme Audit Office.
Number of vaccine refusalsNIK
We are losing population immunity to subsequent diseases
In short: we don't know where we stand, but we know how the low vaccination rate will end.
– Tuberculosis is a serious disease, polio is a disease that can lead to disability, so these are selected diseases that actually pose a threat to children – says Prof. Joanna Zajkowska from the Department of Infectious Diseases and Neuroinfections of the University Clinical Hospital in Białystok.
Estimated data show that in some places vaccination coverage in Poland falls below 90 percent, and the goal to ensure population safety is over 95 percent.
– It will provide an opportunity to protect those children who really cannot be vaccinated for various health reasons, and we were a protective barrier for them, and this barrier is becoming more and more leaky – emphasizes Dr. Jacek Kidoń, a pediatrician from the “Lecznica” municipal clinic in Łódź. .
Two-speed Poland
According to experts, in terms of health care we have a two-speed Poland. The first one includes those vaccinated.
– They will live longer, in better health, there will be fewer premature deaths in this group, and the second group of people who, for reasons unknown to us, because we do not fully understand them, will not do this and will pay a personal price for it – warns prof. Jacek Wysocki, infectious diseases specialist from the Medical University of Poznań.
Theoretically, penalties were supposed to tighten the system. PLN 500 for failing to show up for mandatory vaccination and PLN 5,000 for persistently avoiding the obligation.
– The specter of punishment and the inevitability of having to pay for these decisions in one way or another would also, I think, be an effective form of pressure and improving vaccination rates. This does not work at all at the moment – notes Michał Matyjaszczyk, head of the Department of Family Medicine of the Institute of the Polish Mother's Health Center in Łódź.
The Ministry of Health focuses on education and digitization of the mandatory vaccination system.
– The idea is that the immunization card and the electronic vaccination card are compatible and that all vaccinations that the child has and has not received are visible in the system on an ongoing basis – says Jakub Gołąb, spokesman for the Ministry of Health.
This is expected to happen next year.
Main photo source: TVN24