TRENTO. These are weeks of hard work for pediatricians. Respiratory syncytial virus, first cases of influenza, covid and all diseases related to early childhood are clogging these professionals with requests.
Last Thursday the EMA gave the green light in Europe to vaccination of children between 5 and 11 years old.
Soon the AIFA will also arrive and now the question that haunts all parents is: should they be vaccinated?
Pediatricians seem to have no doubts and have sided compactly in favor of vaccination.
Marta Betta, pediatrician from Alto Garda and secretary of the Italian Federation of pediatricians in Trentino, does not hide that it is difficult for pediatricians, at this moment, to be able to be an active part in the child vaccination campaign by administering the doses themselves, but they are ready to help on the information front.
“Parents have so many doubts and need answers that they would hardly find at the time of administration. Our role is to accompany and support them in their choice ».
As for the risk / benefit ratio of vaccination, the pediatrician recalls the data on hospitalizations and deaths from covid.
In Italy, in the 0-19 range, there were 808,228 infections, 8,557 hospitalizations, 251 children in intensive care and 34 deaths.
“Meningitis, which makes parents so afraid, on average before Covid caused 8 deaths among children a year. The cost / benefit ratio of the covid vaccine is favorable to the vaccine in terms of reduction of cases, hospitalizations, long covid, deaths. But it is also important to get back to a normal social life that children and young people need so much ».
Not even the very rare reported cases of myocarditis should worry, according to the pediatrician in America in the 12-18 range. “All cases have been resolved and the patients discharged from the hospitals on the second day. And in any case, myocarditis also affects children with Covid ».
Then there remains the question of blocking the spread of the virus as much as possible.
«It is a speech that applies to many vaccines. Rubella, for example, is especially dangerous for pregnant women, but the vaccine is also given to males. Just as we recommend the flu vaccine if you have a strongly immunosuppressed person at home ».
The pediatrician also reassures the hypothesis that there may be long-distance side effects. «The vaccine does not replicate. Of course there are no data but there are no reasons to think otherwise because no vaccine has given distant results. I am much more afraid to issue a certificate for a moped license, because I know that the risks on the road are high. People fill their mouths with the word prevention, but when it comes to doing it, we struggle. We must have faith in science, in research.
For bacterial diseases we have antibiotics but for viral ones the only weapon is prevention.
And then it is right to continue using the mask, hand washing, distancing but it is also right to vaccinate children “.
Trentino pediatricians do not have no vax: they are 40 and they are all vaccinated.
«We have also prepared a document that we presented in the Province. Families need to trust. Let alone if we pediatricians would go against the interest of children. We are the guarantors of their physical and psychological health ».