About a week ago we offered you some entries about childhood vaccination, explaining among other things that having lowered the percentages of vaccinated children some diseases are returning, being the most striking, being the most numerous, the measles.
In France they carry something worse than us, because there are more cases than here and consequently more deaths. However, at the rate things are going, we will soon be at the same level.
In the last month they have been notified multitude of cases in various parts of Spain in the form of outbreaks, some more numerous than others, which are already causing regional health systems to carry out vaccinations, which is happening even where there is still no outbreak, as is the case in Madrid, which has decided to advance vaccination of the viral triple to 12 months (previously administered at 15), not because there is a real emergency, but to prevent it.
Sprout in Alicante
On June 15, a measles outbreak in a kindergarten in Alicante which then affected seven infants under 15 months.
In anticipation of what could happen, all children in the nursery who had not been vaccinated received a triple viral dose, although evidently they did not rule out new cases because the disease has a two-week incubation period and because the first contagion occurred outside the nursery.
With these seven cases they are fifteen measles cases registered in the Valencian Community so far this year and for this reason it has been decided to advance vaccination at 12 months.
Outbreak in Mallorca
On June 10 we learned that in Mallorca cases of measles were increasing, especially in adults who in their childhood were not vaccinated. In the early 1980s, between 500 and 8,000 cases were recorded annually in the Balearic Islands, improving this figure year after year, not declaring no case in the year 2009.
Now, Since November of last year, there are 36 known cases. The blame for this increase in cases cannot be blamed solely on families who currently do not wish to vaccinate their children, since this outbreak is largely explained by the non-vaccination of adults when they were young, when they did not catch the disease perhaps because other children did get vaccinated (the vaccine appeared in the early 1980s).
However, part of the 36 recent cases are children whose parents have decided not to vaccinate, the rest being the aforementioned adults between 25 and 35 years, children who have not yet been vaccinated because they are under 15 months old and unstructured families whose access Healing is irregular.
Outbreak in Asturias
On May 26, the news of a new case of measles in Asturias that raised the number of current cases to seven (Now there are more than fifteen).
The first two cases were two brothers aged 16 and 20 whose parents had decided not to vaccinate.
Health I have contacted the parents of the students of the schools to review the vaccination cards of their children and go to their reference health center to be vaccinated in case they have not received the triple viral vaccine to 15 months and three years, as it is extended to teachers and workers in schools.
Outbreak in the Basque Country
On June 10 we learned that, after a decade without measles infections, Health made public the figure of 26 cases of the disease so far this year.
The alarms have not yet been raised, because although the cases have increased, the outbreak is not yet significant. However, they are recommending vaccination to all those who have not yet done so and who have not passed the disease.
Add and follow
Unless the situation changes and the vaccine coverage does not start to increase again (when the risk of an outbreak begins to fall from 95%), the cases will increase more and more.
There are many adults who have not had the disease who have never been vaccinated. Many immigrants who have not been vaccinated arrive in our country. They travel to other unprotected Spanish citizens, as well as tourists who arrive here without having been vaccinated. The majority of children under 12 months (in some cases 15 months) have not yet received the triple viral vaccine and many children are not vaccinated because their parents do not consider it appropriate.
All this makes the risk of infection, having so many people susceptible to catching the disease, is increasing. As I said in previous posts, many people think that "before we all caught measles and nothing happened." Well, then ask all the cases that have ended up admitted to a hospital with pneumonia and ask to the 6 people who have died this year in France and the girl who died in Andalusia.
