Rome, 24 May 2024 – Whooping cough alarm. Sip pediatricians update the terrible data for 2024: 3 children dead since January110 cases were recorded with 15 hospitalizations in intensive care. These are the numbers of Alfredo Guarino, Campania president of the Italian Society of Paediatrics. What is going on? We asked Matteo Bassettidirector of the Infectious and Tropical Diseases clinic at San Martino in Genoa.
Professor, in January you also warned about measles.
“And now I’m tired of this role. In the first four months of the year we had 400 cases of measles, 145 in April alone. In all of 2023, there were fewer than 20. The same thing will happen with whooping cough. Ditto on many other infectious diseases.”
Why?
“The answer is very clear: no one gets vaccinated anymore. This is why I am not surprised by what is happening.”
Returning to whooping cough.
“An infectious disease that has been prevented for 70 years with vaccines. Vaccination during pregnancy is an extraordinary tool for transmitting antibodies to the unborn child. We need to see if today’s situation is only the ‘fault’ of future mothers or if some doctors and gynecologists are also involved.”
What does it predict?
“We will go back 50-70 years, there will be newborns dying of whooping cough and we will have neurological complications from measles. Rubella itself, which was considered almost eradicated, will become a problem again. I remember that if taken during pregnancy it can cause very serious congenital malformations. And all this because there has been a denigrating campaign on vaccines for three years now.” Yet these vaccinations ‘should’ be mandatory…
“They should. But this is the country of the clever. The result is that today the percentage of vaccinations for measles is slightly higher than Romania. Some regions, such as Sicily or Campania, have even lower thresholds, which are truly embarrassing. Let’s remember that for every infected person, 20 infections are expected. This means that the virus will have the opportunity to spread again.”
What is needed?
“Vaccines must return to the center of any government’s agenda. Instead I see too much laxity, even political.”
