Parental trust in children vaccination depends on pediatrician experience

Vaccination is the best investment in public health. According to the World Health Organization, the vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives in the last fifty years, before the World Vaccination, marked by the last week of April, the Director General of the Directorate for Public Health at the Ministry of Health said Vesna Marinko. She emphasized that vaccination is the cornerstone of individual and collective protection, and that safe, effective and numerous free vaccines for both children and adults are available in Slovenia.

Vaccination is still known in public as protection against childhood infectious diseases, but adults can also effectively protect against infections by vaccination, Vesna Marinko added.

Also in Europe, measles, one of the most infectious viral diseases that can lead to serious complications, especially in young children, pregnant women and people with impaired immune systems, are also reappearing. It protects the vaccination against this disease, which is mandatory. In Europe last year, the number of measles cases has doubled and is the highest in the last 27 years, according to World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Fund for Children (Unicef). The disease is also spreading to the US, where more than 700 cases have been confirmed this year, as well as two deaths, the first after 2015, both in unvaccinated children.

According to the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ) last year, 17 measles with measles were reported in Slovenia, in 2023, and this year they have not received a report. There have been no death from measles in recent years. As long as they are appropriate, they cannot be expected, said the head of the Chair of Microbiology and Immunology of the Faculty of Medicine in Ljubljana Alojz Ihan. He noted that « about twenty children would die in each generation without measles vaccination in Slovenia, about as many would have lasting neurological consequences due to brain inflammation. At least five thousand children would have a serious complication of pneumonia, middle ear inflammation and diarrhea with dehydration. «