The Regional Council of Puglia has unanimously given the green light to the law for the increase in vaccination coverage against human papilloma virus, with the explicit aim of strengthening the information network in order to “reduce the unvaccinated to the sole percentage of children and families who choose refusal in full awareness.” In fact, the provision decrees that “enrollment in the educational courses foreseen in the 11-25 age group”, including the university one, is possible only where documentation certifying “the anti-HPV vaccination has taken place” or, alternatively, “a certificate issued by the vaccination centers of the relevant local health authorities, certifying – at the choice of the interested parties – the administration, the start of the administration program or the refusal to administer the vaccine”. A choice that has raised controversy, as it is not clear how enrollment in a school course can be subordinated to a health certification or what effective prevention strategy can arise from it, since it is not, in fact, a vaccination obligation.
The Puglia Region states that the provision is aimed at “making the information duty of health and school authorities widespread on the usefulness of vaccination against human papilloma virus, so as to eradicate infections and prevent their cancerous consequences”. The promoters of the bill, also signed by five other centre-left councilors, are Fabiano Amati of Azione and Pierluigi Lopalco of the Democratic Party. «This is a strategy to make the information network very narrow-meshed, so as to reduce the unvaccinated to the sole percentage of children and families who choose to refuse in full awareness», declared Amati and Lopalco when illustrating the measure before the Regional Council approved it unanimously. There is no shortage of criticism of the contents of the law, since many wonder why the issue is the prerogative of scholastic and academic institutions – from middle schools to universities -, which will be called upon to request medical certifications that they have nothing to do with the students’ educational path. Furthermore, it is not clear where the guarantees on the real effectiveness of this “informative” and “preventive” action lie, since registration can still be carried out if the student declares that he has consciously chosen not to undergo the vaccination. The law specifies that the data collected “will fall within the range of sensitive health data and therefore must be protected with the guarantees and safeguards provided for by law”, but at the same time, within the health file, the refusal to be vaccinated is included .
The HPV virus (English acronym for Human Papilloma Virus) is the most widespread sexually transmitted infection in developed countries. The papilloma viruses that infect the male and female genital organs are divided into two groups, namely that of the low oncogenic risk genotypes and that of the high oncogenic risk genotypes, and they cause a series of pathologies in various parts of the body, from simple warts to tumors of the oral cavity or cervix. As attested by the Italian Group for cervical screening, generally HPV infection “does not cause any alterations and resolves on its own”, while “in a minority of cases it causes lesions at the cervical level”, which for the most part they heal “spontaneously”. If not treated, however, some of them “slowly progress towards tumor forms”, although it takes “many years for the lesions to transform and only very few women with HPV infection will develop cervical cancer, a rare outcome of very frequent infection”.
[di Stefano Baudino]
