I have no idea how the chickenpox vaccine issue is going to end, but I get the feeling that it will end in tragedy, seeing that the rope is increasingly tense after the latest news in recent days.
On the one hand, from the Ministry of Health has asked parents not to vaccinate their children from chicken pox before the age of 12 and on the other, Sanofi, the only pharmacist who had permission to market the chickenpox vaccine (because in Spain the use of Varilrix was banned a few years ago, from GlaxoSmithKline), has denounced to the Ministry to the courts for not allowing the vaccine to be sold for nine months.
What they say from the Ministry of Health
Mercedes Vinuesa, director of Public Health, has declared that the vaccine is not really blocked, because the groups that need it, because they are at risk, can acquire it. I don't know very well what this means, or how the process works, because normally people at risk are administered in health centers or hospitals. In any case, if I go as a father and ask for my son, a healthy child, They won't sell it to me, so yes, the vaccine is blocked.
He has also said that one of the reasons for asking parents not to vaccinate our children for chickenpox is that "in Spain many more vaccines (of chickenpox) are put in place than in other countries", comparing ourselves with other European countries. A great argument (I say it ironically, of course), because for one thing that was being done well in Spain, not even, because it was the parents who had to buy the vaccine, it turns out that now it cannot be done because of course, as the others do not ... and this is comparing us with other countries in Europe, but what if we compare ourselves with the US? There children have been vaccinated for chickenpox for a long time, all the children.
WHO, in this regard, tells us the following:
Varicella vaccines based on the attenuated Oka strain of VZV have been commercialized since 1974 and the positive results of the numerous analyzes of safety, efficacy and cost-effectiveness have justified the introduction of these vaccines in several childhood immunization programs. industrialized countries. The observation of study populations for periods of up to 20 years in Japan and 10 years in the United States of America, showed that more than 90% of immunocompetent people vaccinated in childhood were still protected against chickenpox.
Come on, which is the less curious than in the US and Japan have been administering the vaccine for many years and here in Spain, which we have been using for a very short time, the vaccine is blocked because they are getting too many, as if that were a valid argument. Well that's the idea, if you want to prevent children from passing chickenpox, the more children wear it better.
But Vinuesa adds another argument, which could be the main reason why the vaccine is no longer available to parents: "What we are trying to do is prevent the virus from circulating in adults, where it produces more morbidity and even mortality". This is based on ensuring that chickenpox is a benign disease that leaves immunity for life.
Well, benign, because normally yes, but not always, because sometimes there are complications (tell the family of the girl who died recently and whose sister received the vaccine quickly). And in any case, even when it is benign, the child has to remain at home and that means that a relative, or a parent, has to stay with the child, missing work. As one of two, or a "family chickenpox permit" is established for workers, to miss the necessary time to work and to take care of our children while suffering from the disease, or children with chickenpox are allowed to go to daycare or school if they are well. Total, if it is a benign disease, because it infects others (again ironically, it is not desirable).
And as for preventing the virus from circulating in the adult, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Mass vaccination of children in the US It has served to make the virus very, very controlled in that area. Children, who are the most infected with chickenpox and therefore those who transmit it most, do not catch the disease and thus cannot spread to adults. Unvaccinated adults, as there are no children with chickenpox, are at minimal risk. That is why there, thanks to systematic vaccination, they have very few cases of chickenpox. Here, instead, they suggest that so that adults are not at risk, children should not get vaccinated. No feet, no head.
What Sanofi Pasteur MSD says
The pharmaceutical company has decided report to the Ministry of Health to the courts for blocking the sale of its Varivax product, a vaccine blocked since July 2013. Since the blockade occurred, the company has tried to negotiate with Health to find a way to resolve the blockade, a situation that does not occur in other countries and has caused that many Spanish parents look for the vaccine outside our borders, in Portugal, France or Andorra (and I understand that in Navarra, I don't know how it seems that the blockade has been skipped).
Say, what you say, say, Sanofi doesn't really say anything. He prefers not to make statements about it until everything is resolved, but they have clarified that the blockade does not have nothing to do with vaccine safety, since many people believed that it had been blocked because it was dangerous or harmful to children.
How will all this end? Namely ... for now, the Ministry of Health remains in its thirteen, while the AEPED and other scientific societies continue to recommend the vaccine at 12 months (and Vinuesa asks for silence so that "parents do not get involved").
I leave you below with the statements of Mercedes Vinuesa, in case you are interested in hearing the words from his mouth:
